Oi vision...! 
 

 SERMONS, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE TRON CHURCH, 
 
 (SlasfiToto, 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. 
 
 MINISTER OF THE TRON CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 GLASGOW PRINTED. 
 NEW-YORK, REPRINTED, 
 
 rOR KIRK St MERCEIN, NO. 22 WALL-STREET, 
 
 •\ 
 
 William A. Merceio, Priaterv 
 
 1319. 
 
THE MEMBERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 TRON CHURCH CONGREGATION, GLASGOW, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING SERMONS 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED, 
 
 WITH A LIVELY FEELING ON THE PART OF THEIR AUTHOR. 
 
 OF ALL THE KlNDNEiS AND GOOD WILL 
 
 WHICH HE HAS EXPERIENCED, 
 
 DURING THE TIME OF HIS CONNEXION WITH THEM, 
 
 AND 
 
 WITH EVERY ASSURANCE OF HIS AFFECTIONATE DESIRE 
 
 FOR THEIR BEST INTERESTS. 
 
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 unworthi> 
 ness 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 per- 
 ception of our own character, in the sight of 
 God, without feeling our need of acquittal; 
 and in opposition to every obstacle, which the 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 justice oi God seems to hold out to it, this want 
 is provided for in the Gospel. And it is equal- 
 ly impossible, to have a true perception of the 
 character of God, as being utterly repugnant 
 to sin, without feehng 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 secu- 
 rities equally ample for their progress, and 
 their perfection in holiness. Insomuch, that 
 in every genuine disciple of the New Testa- 
 ment, 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 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 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 dif- 
 fers 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 exist- 
 ence of them — holier than any of the people 
 around him, and yet humbler than them all — 
 realizing, from time to time, a positive increase 
 to the grace and excellency of his character, 
 and yet becoming more tenderly conscious 
 every day of its remaining deformities — gradu- 
 ally 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. 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 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 doc- 
 trine of the gospel, that while it provides di- 
 rectly 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 holiness 
 as an end — and that he who truly accepts of 
 Christ, as the alone foundation of his merito- 
 rious acceptance before God, is stimulated, by 
 the circumstances of his new condition, to 
 breathe holy purposes, and to abound in holy 
 performances. He is created anew unto good 
 works. He is made the workmanship of God 
 m Christ .Tesus. 
 
 The anxious enforcement of one great les- 
 son on the part of a writer, generally proceeds 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 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 importance; and, in offering this volume 
 to the public, the author is far from being in- 
 sensible 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 recurrence of the same idea, 
 though generally expressed in different lan- 
 guage, and with some new speciahty, 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 favourite doctrine, 
 he must combat with certain elements of op- 
 
 T)osition, in the taste, or the pride, or the indo 
 
 1^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 lence, of those whom he is addressing, this 
 will only serve to make him the more importu- 
 nate, 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 possi- 
 ble, to the understanding. If it be a moral 
 lesson, he will labour to bring it home, as near- 
 ly 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 is 
 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 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 be the blemish of a very great and character- 
 istic deformity. 
 
 There is, however, a difference between 
 such truths as are merely of a speculative 
 nature, and such as are allied with practice 
 and moral feeling; and much ought to be con- 
 ceded 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 obliga- 
 tions of his office, who would not, for the sake 
 of this one, wiUingly 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 
 
xii PREFA^i 
 
 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 recognised and read in every exhibi- 
 tion 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 considered as the great basis 
 of a sinner's relisrion. 
 
CONTENTS^ 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THJE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRIT TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE 
 PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 '■^ And my speech, and my preaching, was not with enticing 
 words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the 
 Spirit and of power ; that your faith should not stand in 
 the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." — 1 CoR. 
 ii. 4, 5. - - - - 9 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL TO THE MEN OF 
 THE WORLD. 
 
 " Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! they say of me, Doth he 
 not speak parables?"— EzEK. XX. 49. - - - - 4e 
 
%IV CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE PREPARATION NECESSARY FOR UNDERSTANDING THE 
 MYSTERIES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 " He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto 
 you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, 
 but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him 
 shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but 
 whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even 
 thathehath."—MATTH.xiii. 11,12. - - - - 64 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 AN ESTIMATE OF THE MORALITY THAT IS WITHOUT GODLI- 
 NESS. 
 
 " 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 man, 
 as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come 
 together in judgment. Neither is there any day's-man 
 betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both."— 
 JOB ix. 30—33. 87 
 
 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. 107 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THB NECESSITY OF A MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 
 
 " Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay 
 his hand upon us both." — job ix. 38. - - - - ISS 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 tHE FOLLY OF MEN MEASURING THEMSELVES BY THEM- 
 SELVES. 
 
 " For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or com- 
 pare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but 
 they, measuring themselves by themselves, and com- 
 paring themselves among themselves, are not wise."— 
 2 Cor. X. 12. 148 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 CHRIST THE WISDOM OF GOD. 
 
 « Christ the wisdom of God."— 1 Cor. i. 24. - - - 174 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOVE. 
 
 •'* Keep yourselves in the love of God."— Jude 21. - 
 
 19fi 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 ftRATlTHDF NOT A SORDID AFFECTION. 
 
 " We love him, because he first loved us."— 1 John iv. 19. SI 7 
 SERMON XL 
 
 THE AFFECTION OF MORAL ESTEEM TOWARDS GOD. 
 
 " One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek 
 after ; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the 
 days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and 
 to inquire in his temple."— Psalm xxvii. 4. - - - 249 
 
 SERMON XIL 
 
 THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE. 
 
 " But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in 
 you,'*— John V. 42. - - 279 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 i 
 
 THE NATURAL ENMITY OF THE MIND AGAINST GOD. 
 
 " The carnal mind is enmity against God." — Rom. viii. 7. SIS 
 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. - S34 
 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 - - - - - - - S52 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE UNION OF TRUTH AIND MERCY IN THE GOSPEL. 
 
 "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and 
 peace have kissed each other." — Psalm Ixxxv. lO. - 377 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 "Sanctifiedby faith."— Acts xxvi. 18. - „ . 394 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OP THE SPIRIT TO GIVE EFFECT TO 
 THE PREiVCHING OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 1 Corinthians, ii. 4, 5. 
 
 '* And my speech, and my preaching, was not with en- 
 ticing 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." 
 
 Paul, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, 
 has expressed himself to the same effect as in 
 the text, in the following words : " Not that we 
 are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as 
 of ourselves; hut our sufficiency is of God; who 
 also hath made us ahle ministers of the New 
 Testament; not of the letter, but of the Spirit." 
 In both these passages, the Apostle points to 
 a speciality in the work of a Christian teacher, 
 — a something essential to its success, and 
 which is not essential to the proficiency of scho- 
 lars in the ordinary branches of education, — 
 an influence that is beyond the reach of human 
 power and human wisdom; and to obtain which, 
 immediate recourse must be had, in the way of 
 prayer and dependence, to the power of God. 
 
 2 
 
10 SERMON I. 
 
 Without attempting a full exposition of these^ 
 different verses, we shall, first, endeavour to di- 
 rect your attention to that part of the work of 
 a Christian teacher, which it has in common 
 with any other kind of education; and, secondly, 
 offer a few remarks on the speciality 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 scholars on the other, are 
 still dependent on the will of God. It is true, 
 that, in this case, we are not so ready to feel 
 our dependence. God is apt to be overlooked 
 in all those cases where he acts with unifor- 
 mity. Wherever we see, what we call, the 
 operation of a law of nature, we are apt to 
 ^ shut our eye against the operation of his hand, 
 and faith in the constancy of this law, is sure 
 to beget, in the mind, a sentiment of independ- 
 ence on the power and will of the Deity. Now, 
 in the matters of human education, 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 sus- 
 tained co-operation may in general be counted 
 upon. Let the parent, who witnesses his son's 
 capacity, and his generous ambition for im- 
 provement, send him to a well-qualified in- 
 
SERMON I. U 
 
 stiuctor, and he will be filled with the hope- 
 fiil sentiment of his future eminence, without 
 any reference to God whatever,— without 
 so much as ever thinking of his purpose or 
 of his agency in the matter, or its once occur- 
 ring to him to make the proficiency of his son 
 the subject of prayer. This is the way in 
 which nature, by the constancy of her opera- 
 tions, is made to usurp the place of God: and 
 it goes far to spread, and to establish the de- 
 lusion, when we attend to the obvious fact, that 
 a man of the most splendid genius may be des- 
 titute of piety ; that he may fill the office of an 
 instructor with the greatest talent and success, 
 and yet be without reverence for God, and 
 practically disown him ; and that thousands of 
 our youth may issue every year warm from the 
 schools of Philosophy, stored with all her les- 
 sons, and adorned with all her accomplish- 
 ments, and yet be utter strangers to the power 
 of godliness, and be filled with an utter dis- 
 taste 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 dependence 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 govern- 
 ment over thisone thing,— he will commit toGod 
 
12 SERMON I. 
 
 the progress of his son in every one branch of 
 education he may put him to, — and, knowing 
 that the talent of every teacher, and the con- 
 tinuance of his zeal, and his powers of commu- 
 nication, and his faculty of interesting the at^ 
 tention of his pupils, — that all these are the 
 gifts of God, and may be withdrawn by him at 
 pleasure, — he will not suffer 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 every one element which 
 enters into the business of education, and con- 
 spires 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 elements, — and while science is raising 
 her wondrous monuments, and drawing the 
 admiration of the world after her, — it remains 
 to be seen, on the day of the revelation of hid- 
 den things, whether the prayers of the humble 
 and derided Christian, for a blessing on those 
 to whom he has confided the object of his ten- 
 derness, have not sustained the vigour and the 
 brilliancy of those very talents on which the 
 w^orld is lavishing the idolatry of her praise. 
 
 Let us now conceive the very ablest of these 
 teachers, to bring all his powers and all his ac- 
 complishments, to bear on the subjectof Christi- 
 anity. Has he skill in the languages ? The very 
 same process by w^hich he gets at the meaning 
 of any ancient author, carries him to a fair 
 
SERMON L 13 
 
 and a faithful rendering 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 ta- 
 lent, by which he can seize on the leading 
 principles which run through the writings of 
 some eminent philosopher ? This very exercise 
 may be gone through on the writings of Inspir- 
 ation; and the man, who, with the works of 
 Aristotle before him, can present the world 
 with the best system or summary of his prin- 
 ciples, might transfer these very powers to the 
 works of the Apostles and Evangelists, and pre- 
 sent 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 scholar- 
 ship, might turn his entire mind to the field of 
 Christianity ; and by the very same kind of ta- 
 lent, which would have made him the most 
 eminent of all the philosophers, he might come 
 to be counted the most eminent of all the the- 
 ologians ; and he who could have reared to his 
 fame some monument of literary genius, might 
 now, by the labours of his midnight oil, rear 
 some beauteous and consistent fabric of ortho- 
 
14 SERMON I. 
 
 doxy, strengthened, in all its parts, by one un- 
 broken 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 wdth other 
 teachers, and even though they did make up 
 all the qualifications necessary for his office, 
 there would still be a call, as we said before, for 
 the exercise of dependence upon God. Well 
 do we know, that both he and his hearers would 
 be apt to put their faith in the uniformity of 
 nature ; and forgetting that it is the inspiration 
 of the Almighty which giveth and preserveth 
 the understanding of all his creatures, might 
 be tempted to repose that confidence in man, 
 which displaces God from the sovereignty 
 that belongs to him. But what we wish to pre- 
 pare you for, by the preceding observations, is. 
 that you may understand the altogether pecu- 
 liar call, that there is for dependence on God in 
 the case of a Christian teacher. We have made 
 a short enumeration of those talents which a 
 teacher ofChristianity might possess, in common 
 with other teachers ; but it is for the purpose 
 of proving that he might possess them all, and 
 heightened to such a degree, if you will, as 
 would have made him illustrious on any other 
 field, and yet be utterly destitute of powers for 
 acquiring himself, or of experience for teach- 
 ing others, that knowledge of God and of Jesus 
 Christ which is life everlasting. 
 
 y 
 
SERMON I. i.'^ 
 
 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 use- 
 fulness in the vineyard of Christ, f f, conscious 
 that he wants it, he seek 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 pull- 
 ing 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 invincible 
 demonstrations ; or, if his people, on the other 
 hand, ever ready to be set in motion by the idle 
 impulse of novelty, or to be seduced by the glare 
 of human accomplishments, come in trooping 
 Hmltitudes around him, and hang on the elo- 
 quence of his lips, or the wisdom of his able and 
 profound understanding, a more unchristian at- 
 titude cannot be conceived, nor shall we ven- 
 ture 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 degrad- 
 ed into a stipulated exchange of entertainment 
 on the one side, and of admiration on the other ; 
 and surely it were a sight to make angels weep 
 when a weak and vapouring mortal, surround- 
 
16 SERMON 1. 
 
 ed by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the 
 grave and the judgment along with them, finds 
 it a dearer object to his bosom, to regale his 
 hearers by the exhibition of himself, than to do 
 in plain earnest the w^ork of his Master, and 
 urge on the business of repentance and of faith 
 by the impressive simplicities of the Gospel. 
 
 II. This brings us to the second head of 
 discourse, under which we shall attempt to 
 give you a clear view of what that is which con- 
 stitutes 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 at- 
 tention and understanding which enable him to 
 comprehend the subject of any other book, 
 there is much in this book also which he will 
 be able to perceive and to talk of intelligently* 
 Thus, for example, he may come, by the mere 
 exercise of his ordinary powers, to understand, 
 that it is the Holy Spirit which taketh of the 
 things of Christ and showeth them to the mind 
 of man. But is not his understanding of 
 this truth, as it is put down in the plain lan- 
 guage 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 meaning to what he says, that man is res- 
 cued from his natural darkness about the things 
 
SERMON I. 17 
 
 of God, by God who created the light out of 
 darkness shining in his heart, and giving him 
 the light of the knowledge of his glory in the 
 face of Jesus Christ. But is not his saying this, 
 and understanding this, by taking up these 
 words in the same obvious way in which any 
 man of plain and honest understanding would 
 do, a very different thing from God actually 
 putting forth his creative energy upon him, 
 and actually shining upon his heart, and giv- 
 ing him that light and that knowledge which 
 are expressed in the passage here alluded to ? 
 Again, by the very same exercise wherewith he 
 renders the sentence of an old author 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 
 discerned." By the mere dint of that shrewd- 
 ness 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 acquiring that con- 
 ception of the meaning of this passage, which 
 is quite competent to a man of a strong and 
 accomplished understanding. For the sake 
 of illustration, we may conceive this poor out- 
 
 3 
 
la SERMOJ^^ L 
 
 cast from the common light of humanity, in 
 some unaccountable 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 cannot shake 
 off the fetters which the hand of nature has 
 laid upon his understanding; and he goes back 
 again to the dimness and delirium of his un- 
 happy situation ; and his mind locks itself up in 
 the prison-hold of its confined and darkened fa- 
 culties ; and if, in his mysterious state of exist- 
 ence, 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 concep- 
 tion of him, who has all the common powers 
 and perceptions of the species. 
 
 Now, we would ask what kind of conception 
 is that which a man of entire faculties may form.^ 
 Only grant us the undeniable truth, that he may 
 understand how he cannot discern the things of 
 the Spirit, unless the Spirit reveal them to him ; 
 and yet with this understanding, he may not 
 be one of those in behalf of whom the Spirit 
 hath actually interposed with his peculiar office 
 of revelation ; and then you bring into view 
 another barrier, no less insurmountable than 
 that which fixes an immutable distinction be- 
 tween the conceptions of an idiot and of a man 
 of sense. — even that wonderful barrier which 
 
SERMON I. 19 
 
 separates the natural from the spiritual man. 
 You can conceive him struggling with every 
 power which Jiature has given him to work 
 his way through this barrier. You can con- 
 ceive him vainly attempting, by some energies 
 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 na- 
 tural wisdom can ever reach, with all his atten- 
 tion to the Bible, and all the efforts of hig 
 sagacity, however painful, to unravel, and to 
 compare, and to comprehend its passages. 
 And it is indeed a deeply interesting object to 
 see a man of powerful understanding thus visit- 
 ted withan 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 philosophy, — mustering, to the high enter- 
 prise, his attention, and his conception, and his 
 reason, and his imagination, and the whole 
 
20 SERMON I. 
 
 host of his other faculties, on which science ha? 
 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 pleasure Over the wide variety 
 of her dominions. 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 
 w^ay through all the darknesses of theology. 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 in- 
 quiries on which he entered with so much 
 alacrity, and prosecuted with so much confi- 
 dence, that there is a barrier between him and 
 the spiritual discernment of his Bible, which 
 all the powers of philosophy cannot scale, — 
 not till he find, that he must cast down his 
 lofty imaginations, and put the pride of all his 
 powers and all 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 little 
 child, or one of those babes to whom God re- 
 veals the things which he hides from the wise 
 and from the prudent, — not till he find, that 
 the attitude of self dependence must be bro- 
 ken down, and he be brought to acknowledge 
 
SERMON I. 2] 
 
 that the light he is aspiring after, is not cre- 
 ated by himself, but must be made to shine 
 upon him at the pleasure of another, — 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 understand- 
 ing from the sanctuary of God. 
 
 We read of the letter, and we read also of 
 the spirit, of the New Testament. It would re- 
 quire a volume, rather than a single paragraph 
 of a single sermon, to draw the line between 
 the one and the other. But you will readily ac- 
 knowledge that there are many things of this 
 book which a man, though untaught by the Spi- 
 rit of God, may be made to know. One of the 
 simplest instances 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 memory he may 
 be able to master all its historical information. 
 And is this all ? No, — for by the natural exer- 
 cise of his judgment he may compare scripture 
 with scripture, — he may learn wliat its doctrines 
 are,— he may demonstrate the orthodoxy of every 
 one article in our national confession, — he may 
 rank among the ablest and most judicious of 
 the commentators, — he may read, and with 
 understanding too, many a ponderous volume, 
 
 ^ 
 
22 SERMON I. 
 
 — he may store himself with the learning of 
 many generations, — he may be familiar with all 
 the systems, and have mingled with all the con- 
 troversies, — and yet, with a mind supporting as 
 it does the burden of the erudition of whole li- 
 braries, 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 articles, may be 
 no better than the dry bones in the vision of 
 Ezekiel, put together into a skeleton, and fast- 
 ened 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 w hich nature can 
 give,butlabouring under all the darkness which 
 no power of nature can dispel, — to see this man 
 of many accomplishments, who can bring his 
 every power of demonstration to bear upon 
 the Bible, carryhig in his bosom a heart un- 
 cheered by any one of its consolations, unmov- 
 ed by the influence of any one of its truths, un- 
 shaken 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 
 
SERMON 1. 23 
 
 walk of a believer, and give to every one of 
 his doings the high character 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, without leaving 
 a number of unresolved questions 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 w^ord, open a 
 door to the most unbridled variety ? May it not 
 give a sanction to any conceptions of any vision- 
 ary pretenders, and clothe in all the authority of 
 inspiration, a set of doctrines not to be found with- 
 in the compass of the written record? Doesitnot 
 set aside the usefulness of the Bible, and break in 
 upon the unity and consistency of revealed truth, 
 by letting loose upon the world a succession 
 of fancies, as endless and as variable as are the 
 caprices of the human imagination? All very true, 
 did we ever pretend that the office of the Spi- 
 rit was to reveal any thing additional to the in- 
 formation, whether in the way of doctrine or 
 of duty, which the Bible sets before us. But 
 his office, as defined by the Bible itself, is not 
 to make known to us any truths which are not 
 contained in the Bible ; but to make clear to 
 our understandings the truths which are con- 
 
24 SERMON 1. 
 
 tained in it. He opens our understandings 
 to understand the Scriptures. The word ot 
 God is called the sword of the Spirit. It is the 
 instrument by which 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 effect, 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 distant 
 landscape, it enables us to see what we could 
 not otherwise have seen ; but does it not enable 
 us to see any thing which has not a real ex- 
 istence in the prospect before us. It does not 
 present to the eye any delusive imagery,— rnei- 
 ther is that a fanciful and fictitious scene which 
 it throws open to our contemplation. The na- 
 tural 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 fields, and woods, and spires, and villages. 
 Yet who would say that the glass added one 
 feature to this assemblage ? It discovers no- 
 thing to us which is not there ; nor, out of that 
 portion of the book of nature which we are em- 
 ployed in contemplating, does it bring into view 
 a single character which is not really and pre- 
 viously inscribed upon it. And so of the Spirit. 
 He does not add a single truth, or a single cha- 
 racter, to the book of revelation. He enables 
 the spiritual man to see what the natural man 
 
SERMON I. 25 
 
 cannot s6e ; but the spectacle which he lays 
 open is uniform and immutable. It is the word 
 of God, which is ever the same ; — and he, whom 
 the Spirit of God has enabled to look to the Bi- 
 ble with a clear and affecting discernment, sees 
 no phantom passing before him; but, amid all 
 the visionary extravagance with which he is 
 charged, can, for every one article of his faith, 
 and every one duty of his practice, make his tri- 
 umphant 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 re- 
 cord for the purpose of having this truth made 
 known to us, — that God is every where present. 
 It meets^ the observation 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 attri- 
 butes of God ; and he gives it an avowed and a 
 formal admission among the articles of his creed ; 
 and yet, with all this parade of light and of 
 knowledge, he, upon the subject of the all-see- 
 ing and the ever-present Deity, labours under 
 all the obstinacy of an habitual bhndness. Car- 
 ry him abroad, and you will find that the light 
 which beams upon his senses, from the objects 
 of sight, completely overpowers that light 
 which ought to beam upon his spirit, from this 
 object of faith. He may occasionally think of 
 it as he does of other things ; but for every one 
 4 
 
50 SERMON L 
 
 practical purpose the thought abandons 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 completely disappears as an element of con- 
 duct, and he talks, and thinks, and reasons, just 
 as he would have done, had his mind, in refer- 
 ence to God, been in a state of entire darkness. 
 If any thing like a right conception of the mat- 
 ter ever exist in his heart, the din and the 
 day -light of the world drive it all away from 
 him. Now, to rectify this case, it is surely not 
 necessary, 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 operates, a 
 steady and enduring impression of this truth. 
 Now, this is one part of his office, and accord- 
 ingly it is said of the unction of the- Spirit, that 
 it is an unction which remaineth. Neither is 
 it necessary that the light, which he communi- 
 cates, should consist 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 
 apprehension of the truth, just as it is writ- 
 ten, to the understanding. Though the Spirit 
 should do no more than give vivacity and effect 
 to the truth of the constancy of God's presence, 
 just as it stands in the written record — this will 
 
SERMON 1. - 27 
 
 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 
 Jong, 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 natural man may 
 have sense, and he may have sagacity, and a 
 readiness withal to admit the constancy of 
 God's presence, as an undeniable doctrine of 
 the Bible. But to the power of this truth he 
 is dead ; and it is only to the power of this 
 world's interests and pleasures that he is alive. 
 The spiritual man is the reverse of all this, and 
 that without carrying his conceptions a single 
 hair breadth beyond the communications of the 
 written message. He makes no pretensions to 
 wisdom by one jot or one tittle beyond the tes- 
 timony of Scripture, and yet, after ail, 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 revela- 
 tion, but it throws a radiance over every object 
 within it. It furnishes him with a constant 
 light which enables him to withstand the do- 
 mineering influence of sight and,of sen^e. He 
 dies unto the world, he lives unto God,— and 
 the reason is, that there rests upon him a pe- 
 
28 SERiMON 1. 
 
 culiar manifestation, by which the truth is made 
 visible to the eye of his mind, and a peculiar 
 energy, by which it comes home upon his con- 
 science. 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 conferred upon man, exalted to its 
 highest measure, and called forth to its most 
 strenuous 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 demonstration of the Spirit,— a de- 
 monstration withheld from the self-sufficient 
 exertions of man, and given to his believing 
 prayers. 
 
 And here we are reminded of an instructive 
 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 formerly 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 resistless arguments, that he felt as if he 
 had nothing to do, but to brandish those mighty 
 weapons, that he might gain all hearts and car- 
 ry every thing before him. But he did not 
 calculate on the stubborn resistance of corrupt 
 human nature, to him and to his reasonings. 
 lie preached, and he argued, and he put forth 
 
SERMON I. 29 
 
 all his powers of eloquence amongst them. But 
 mortified that so many hearts remained har- 
 dened, that so many hearers resisted him, that 
 the doors of so many hearts were kept shut in 
 spite of all his loud and repeated warnings, that „ 
 so many souls remained unsubdued, and dead 
 in trespasses and sins, he was heard to ex- 
 claim, that old Adam was too strong for young 
 Melancthon. 
 
 There is the malignity of the fall which, ad- 
 heres to us. There is a power of corruption 
 and of blindness along with it, which it is be- 
 yond the compass of human means to over- 
 throw. There is a dark and settled depravity 
 in the human character, which maintains its 
 gloomy and obstinate resistance to all our warn- 
 ings and all our arguments. There is a spirit 
 working in the children of disobedience which 
 no power of human eloquence can lay. There 
 is a 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 conflict may have zeal, and talents, and 
 eloquence. 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, flushed with the mighty 
 enterprise of turning souls from the dominion 
 of Satan unto God. In all the hope of victory 
 
30 SERMON I. 
 
 he may discharge the weapons of his warfare 
 among them. Week after week, he may reason 
 with them out of the Scriptures. Sabbath after 
 Sabbath, he may declaim, he may demonstrate, 
 he may put forth every expedient, he may at 
 one time set in array before them the terrors 
 of the law, at another he may try to win them 
 by the free offer of the Gospel ; and, in the 
 proud confidence of success, he may think that 
 nothing can withstand him, and that the heart 
 of every hearer must give way before the ar- 
 dour of his zeal and the power of his invin- 
 cible arguments. Yes; they may admire himy 
 and they may follow him, but the question we 
 have to ask is, will they be converted by him ? 
 They may even go so far as to allow that it is 
 all very true he says. He may be their fa- 
 vourite preacher, and when he opens his ex- 
 hortations upon them, there may be a deep and 
 a solemn attention in every countenance. But 
 how is the heart coming on all the while ? 
 How do these people live, and what evidence 
 are they giving of being born again under the 
 power of his ministry? It is not enough to be 
 told of those momentary convictions which 
 flash from the pulpit, and carry a thrilling in- 
 fluence along with them through the hearts of 
 listening admirers. Have these hearers of the 
 word, become the doers of the word ? Have 
 they sunk down into the character of humble, 
 and sanctified, and penitent, and pains-taking 
 
SERMON I. 31 
 
 Christians? Where, where, is the fruit? And 
 while the preaching of Christ is all their joy, 
 has the will of Christ become all their direc- 
 tion ? Alas, he may look around him, and at 
 the end of the year, after all the tumults of a i 
 sounding popularity, he may find the great bulk 
 of them just where they were, — as listless and 
 unconcerned about the things of eternity, — as 
 obstinately alienated from God, — as firmly de- 
 voted t<y selfish and transitory interests,- — as 
 exclusively set upon the farm, and the money, 
 and the merchandise, — and, with the covering 
 of many external decencies, to make them as 
 fair and plausible as their neighbours around 
 them, proving by a heart given, with the whole 
 tide of its affections, to the vanities of the world, 
 that they have their full share of the 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 
 ground among them. He is grieved to learn 
 that all he has said, has had no more effect, 
 than the foolish and the feeble lispings 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 under- 
 stand that another power must be brought to 
 bear upon the mass of resistance which is be- 
 fore him ; and let the man of confident and as- 
 piring genius, who thought he was to assail the 
 
32 SERMON I, 
 
 dark seats of human corruption, and to carry 
 them by storm, let him be reduced in morti- 
 fied and dependent humbleness to the expe- 
 dient of the Apostle, let him crave the inter- 
 cessions of his people, and throw himself upon 
 their prayers. 
 
 Let us now bring the whole matter to a prac- 
 tical conclusion. For the acquirement of a 
 saving and spiritual knowledge of the gospel, 
 you are, on the one hand, to put forth all your 
 ordinary powers, in 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 doing so, you, on the other hand, 
 are to proceed on a profound impression of the 
 utter fruitlessness of all your endeavours, unless 
 God meet them by the manifestations of his 
 Spirit. In other words, you are to read your 
 Bible, and to bring your faculties of attention, 
 and understanding, and memory, to the exercise 
 just as strenuously as if these and these alone 
 could conduct you to the light after which you 
 are aspiring. But you are at the same time to 
 pray as earnestly for this object, as if God ac- 
 complished it without your exertions at all, in- 
 stead of accomplishing it in the way he actually 
 does, by your exertions. It is when your eyes 
 are turned toward the book of God's testimony, 
 and not when your eyes are turned away from 
 it, that he fulfils upon you the petition of the 
 Psalmist, — "Lord, do thou open mine eyes, that 
 
SERMON I. 33 
 
 - 1 may behold the wondrous things contained J 
 •^ in thy law." You are not to exercise your fa- 
 culties in searching after truth without prayer, 
 else God will withhold from you his illuminating 
 influences. And you are not to pray for truth, 
 without exercising your faculties, else God will 
 reject your prayers, as the mockery of a hypo- 
 crite. But you are to do both, and this is in 
 harmony with the whole style of a Christian's 
 obedience, who is as strenuous in doing as if 
 his doings were to accomplish all, and as fer- 
 vent in prayer as if without the inspiring ener- 
 gy of God, all his doings were vanity and fee- 
 bleness. And the great Apostle may be quoted 
 as the best example 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 variety of his la- 
 bours! What preaching, what travelling, what 
 writing of 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 
 behoved to be ever on the alert, in counselling 
 the one and in warding off the hostility of the 
 other. Look to all that is visible in the life of 
 this Apostle, and you see nothing but bustle, 
 and enterprise, and variety. You see a man 
 intent on the furtherance of some great object, 
 
 5 
 
34 SERMON I. 
 
 and in the prosecution of it, as ever diligent, 
 and as ever doing, as if the whole burden of it 
 lay upon himself, or as if it were reserved for 
 the strength of his solitary arm to accomplish 
 it. To this object he consecrated every mo- 
 ment 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 independ- 
 ence 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 w^ondrous activity to all the 
 days of his earthly pilgrimage. There are 
 some, who are so far misled by a kind of per- 
 verse theology which they have adopted, as to 
 hesitate about the lawfulness of being diligent 
 and doing in the use of means. While they are 
 slumbering over their speculation, and proving 
 -, how honestly they put faith in.it by doing no- 
 thing, let us be guided by the example of the 
 pains-taking and industrious Paul, and remem- 
 ber, that never since the days of this Apostle, 
 w ho calls upon us to be the followers of him, 
 even as he was of Christ, — never were the 
 labours of human exertion more faithfully ren- 
 dered, — never were 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 to- 
 
SERMON r. 35 
 
 ward the extension of the Christian fgiith, as if 
 the whole success of the cause depended upon 
 his doing, — he prayed as much, and as fervent- 
 ly, for this object, as if all his doings were of 
 no consequence. A fine testimony to the supre- 
 macy of God, from the man, who, in labours 
 was more abundant than any who ever came 
 after him, that he counted all as nothing, unless 
 God would interfere to put his blessing upon 
 all, and to give his efficiency to all ! He who 
 looked so busy, and whose hand was so con- 
 stantly engaged, in the work that was before 
 him, looked for all his success to that help 
 which Cometh from the sanctuary 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 diligence, because God had reveal- 
 ed to him, that plant as he may, and water as he 
 may, God alone giveth the increase. He did 
 homage to the will of God, by the labours of 
 the ever-working minister, — and he did hom- 
 age to the power of God, by the devotions of 
 the ever-praying minister. He did not say, 
 what signifies my working, for God alone can 
 work with effect ?- This is very true, but God 
 chooses to work by instruments, — and Paul, 
 by the question, " Lord, what wilt thou have 
 me to do ?" expressed his readiness to be an 
 instrument in his hand. Neither did he say, 
 
36 SERMOiN I 
 
 what signifies my praying, for 1 have got a work 
 here to do, and it is enough that I be diligent 
 in the performance of it. No — For the power 
 of God must be acknowledged, and a sense of 
 his power must mingle with all our perform- 
 ances; and therefore it is that the Apostle kept 
 both working and praying, and with him they 
 formed two distinct emanations 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 
 exercises, and combine, in his own example, 
 the utmost diligence in doing, with the utmost 
 dependence on him who can alone give to that 
 doing all its fruit and all its efficacy. 
 
 The union of these two graces has at times 
 been finely exemplified in the later, and unin- 
 spired ages of the Christian church ; and the 
 case of the missionary Elliot is the first, and 
 the most impressive that occurs to us. His 
 labours, like those of the great Apostle, were 
 directed to the extension of the vineyard of 
 Christ, — and he was among the very first who 
 put forth his hand to the breaking up of the 
 American wilderness. For this purpose did 
 he set himself down to the acquirement of a 
 harsh and barbarous language; and he became 
 qualified to confer with savages ; and he grap- 
 pled for years with their untractable humours; 
 
SERMON L 37 
 
 and he collected these wanderers into villages; 
 and while other reformers have ennobled their 
 names by the formation of a new set of public 
 laws, did he take upon him the far more ardu- 
 ous 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 chris- 
 tianizing system into the very bosom of their 
 families ; and he spread art, and learning, and 
 civilization amongst them; and to his visible 
 labours among his people he added the labours 
 of the closet ; and he translated the whole Bi- 
 ble 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 peopled by the rudest of its tribes, should 
 ask in vain for the mighty power by which such 
 wondrous things had been brought to pass, — 
 this venerable priest left his testimony behind 
 him; and neither overlooking the agency of 
 God, nor the agency of man as the instrument 
 of God, he tells us in one memorable sentence 
 written by himself at the end of his, Indian 
 grammar, that " prayers and pasns through 
 faith in Christ Jesus can do any thing." 
 
 The last inference we shall draw from thi? 
 topic, is the duty and importance of prayer 
 among Christians, for the success of the minis- 
 try of the Gospel. Paul had a high sense of the 
 efficacy of prayer. Not according to that re- 
 
38 SERMON 1. 
 
 fined view of it, which, making all its influence 
 to consist in its improving 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 re- 
 earthly benefit which is at the giving of ano- 
 ceiving. And just as when in pursuit of some 
 t-her, you think yourselves surer of your object 
 the more you multiply the number of askers 
 and the number of applications — in this very 
 way did he, if we may be allowed the expression, 
 contrive to strengthen and extend his interest 
 in the court of heaven. He craved the inter- 
 cessions of his people. There w^ere many be- 
 lievers formed under his ministry, and eadi of 
 these could bring the prayer of faith to bear 
 upon the counsels of God, and bring down a 
 larger portion of strength and of fitness to rest 
 on the Apostle for making moi'te believers. It 
 was a kind of creative or accumulating process. 
 After he had travailed in birth with his new 
 converts till Christ was formed in them — this 
 was the use he put them to. It is an expedient 
 w^iich harnaonizes with the methods of Provi- 
 dence and the will of God, who orders inter- 
 cessions, 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 lea- 
 ven which is to leaven the whole earth with 
 Christianity. It is one of the destined instfu- 
 
SERMON I. 39 
 
 merits 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 reveries of fanaticism. This is a subject on 
 which the men of the world are in a deep slum- 
 ber ; but there are watch^nen who never hold 
 their peace day nor night, and to them God 
 addresses these remarkable words, " Ye that 
 make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, 
 and give hipi no rest, till he establish, and till 
 he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL TO THE 
 MEN OF 'the world. 
 
 EZEKIEL XX. 49. 
 
 '• Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he 
 not speak parables ?" 
 
 In parables, the lesson that is meant to be con= 
 veyed is to a certain degree shaded in obscu- 
 rity. They are associated by the Psalmist with 
 dark sayings — " I will open my mouth in a pa- 
 rable, I will utter dark sayings of old." We 
 read in the New Testament of a parable leav- 
 ing all the effect of an unexplained mystery 
 upon the understanding of the general au- 
 dience to which it was addressed ; and the ex- 
 planation 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 
 
SERMON 11. 41 
 
 veil over the meaning of their communications ; 
 and though it was a veil of such transparency 
 as could be seen through by those who looked 
 earnestly and attentively, and with a humble 
 desire to be taught in the will of God, — yet 
 there was dimness enough to intercept all the 
 moral, and all the significancy, from the minds 
 of those who wanted principle to be in earnest ; 
 or who wanted patience for the exercise of 
 attention ; or who wanted such a concern about 
 God, as either to care very much for his will, 
 or to feel that any thing which respected him 
 was worth the trouble of a very serious inves- 
 tigation. 
 
 They who wanted this concern and this prin- 
 ciple, 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 prepara- 
 tion of all this docility, to them more was given. 
 Their honest desire after knowledge was re- 
 warded by the acquirement of it. They conti- 
 nued to look, and to inquire, and at length they 
 were illuminated; 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 obscure 
 intimations of Ezekiel would be taken by the 
 careless and ungodly men of his generation. 
 
 6 
 
42 SERMON II. 
 
 It is likelj that even from the naked denuncia- 
 tions of vengeance they would have turned 
 contemptuously away. And it is still more 
 likely that they would refuse the impression of 
 them, when offered to their notice, under a fig- 
 urative 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 utterly 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 aller the interpreta- 
 tion 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 indiflference. 
 And thus it is, that to be a teacher of parables 
 might at length become a scoff and a by-word ; 
 and the prophet seems to have felt the force of 
 it as an opprobrious designation, seems to be 
 looking forward to the mixture of disdain and 
 impatience with which he would be listened 
 to, when God charged him with an allegorical 
 communication to his countrymen, and he an- 
 swered, "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 preferred 
 against the faithful messengers of God in the 
 present day ? It is true, that in our time there 
 
SERMON ir. 4S 
 
 is no such thing as a man coming amongst you, 
 charged with the utterance of a direct and per- 
 sonal inspiration. But it is the business of 
 every minister truly to expound the record of 
 inspiration ; and is it not very possible that in 
 so doing he may be reproached, not for preach- 
 ing parabolically, but for preaching mysterious- 
 ly ? Have you never heard of a sermon being 
 called mystical ; and what shall we think of it, 
 if, in point of fact, this imputation falls most 
 readily and most abundantly on the sermon 
 that is most pervaded by the spirit, and most 
 overrun with the phraseology of the New Tes- 
 tament ? In that composition there are certain 
 terms which recur incessantly, and which would 
 therefore appear to represent certain very 
 leading and prominent ideas. Now, whether 
 are these ideas clearly and promptly suggested 
 to your mind, by the utterance of the 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 obtrud- 
 ed 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 in- 
 dwelling of the Holy Ghost, who takes up his 
 habitation in the soul of the believer; and sal- 
 vation by grace; and the spirit of adoption 
 poured forth on the heart, and filling it with 
 
44 SERMON II. 
 
 all the peace and joy of a confident reconcilia- 
 tion ; and the exercise of fellowship with the 
 Father, and the Son ; and the process of grow- 
 ing 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 you feel the disgust with which un- 
 subdued nature ever listens to these represen- 
 tations; or in what degree they are offensive 
 to your taste, and painfully uncongenial with 
 the whole style and habit of your literature. 
 But we ask, if such terms and such phrases as 
 have now been specified, do not spread before 
 the eye of your mind an aspect of exceeding 
 dimness over the preacher's demonstration ? 
 Does he not appear to you as if he wrapped 
 himself up in the obscurity of a technical lan- 
 guage, which you are utterly at a loss to com- 
 prehend ? When the sermon in question is put 
 by the side of some lesson of obvious morality, 
 or some exposition of those principles which 
 are recognised and acted upon in ordinary life, 
 does it not look to you as if it w^as shrouded 
 from common observation altogether ; and that 
 ere you could be initiated into the mystery of 
 such language and of such doctrine, you would 
 need to describe a mighty and still untrodden 
 interval from all your present habits of con- 
 ception? And yet, what if it be indeed the 
 
SERMON li. 45 
 
 very language and the very doctrine of the 
 New Testament? — if all the jargon that is 
 charged on the interpretation of the word be 
 the actual word itself? — and if the preacher be 
 faithfully conveying the message of the Bible, 
 at the very time that the hearer is shielding 
 himself from the impression of it, by the saying, 
 that he preacheth mysteries ? 
 
 But to keep the two parties at a still more 
 hopeless distance from each other, — the mes- 
 sage of such a preacher, incomprehensible as 
 many of its terms and many of its- particulars 
 may be, evidently bears a something upon it 
 that is fitted to alarm the fears, and utterly to 
 thwart the strongest tendencies of nature. Let 
 him be just a faithful expounder of the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ, and let the blindness of the 
 natural man be what it may, still there is 
 scarcely a hearer who can fail to perceive, 
 that, anterior to the reception of this Gospel, 
 the preacher looks upon him as the enemy of 
 God, — and strongly points at such a contro- 
 versy between him and his Maker, as can only 
 be made up through an appointed Mediator — 
 and requires of him such a faith as will trans- 
 form his character, and as will shift the whole 
 currency of his affections and desires — and af- 
 firms the necessity of such a regeneration, as 
 that all old things shall be done away, and all 
 things shall become new ; — and lets him know, 
 that to be a Christian indeed he must die unto 
 
4ft SERMON IL 
 
 sense, he must be crucified unto the world, 
 and, renouncing its charms and its predilec- 
 tions, must learn to have his conversation! in 
 heaven, and to choose God as the strength of 
 his heart and his portion for evermore. All 
 this flashes plainly and significantly enough, 
 through that veil of mysticism w^hich appears 
 to overspread the general doctrine of the 
 preacher ; and imparts a forbidding character 
 to it in the eyes of those to whom we are al- 
 luding; and they will be glad of any pretence 
 to shun a painful and a revolting contemplation ; 
 and they will complain of him on the very 
 ground on which the Jews of old complained 
 of Ezekiel, as a dealer in parables — and while 
 much of their antipathy is founded upon his 
 being so strict and so spiritual, and so unac- 
 commodating to the general tone of society, 
 one of the charges which will be most frequently 
 and most loudly preferred against him, is that 
 he is so very mysterious. 
 
 In the prosecution of the following discourse, 
 we shall endeavour in the first place to state 
 shortly the ground on which the religion of 
 the New Testament looks so mysterious a 
 thing to the men of the world, and then con- 
 clude with a short practical remonstrance upon 
 this subject. 
 
 I. There are certain experiences of human 
 life so oft repeated, ' and so familiar to all 
 
SERMON II. 47 
 
 our recollections, that when we perceive, or 
 think we perceive, an analogy between them 
 and the matters of religion, then religion does 
 not appear to us to be mysterious. There is 
 not a more familiar exhibition in society than 
 that of a servant who performs his allotted 
 work, and who obtains his stipulated reward 
 — and we are all servants, and one is our mas- 
 ter, even God. There is nothing more com- 
 mon than that a son should acquit himself to 
 the satisfaction of his parents, — and we are all 
 the children of an universal parent, whom it 
 is our part to please in all things. Even when 
 that son falls under displeasure, and is either 
 visited with compunction or made to receive 
 the chastisement of his disobedience, there is 
 nothing more common than to witness the re^ 
 len tings of an earthly father, and the readi- 
 ness with which forgiveness is awarded on the 
 repentance and sorrow of the offender, — and 
 we, in like manner, liable to err from the pure 
 law of heaven, have surely a kind and indul- 
 gent Father to deal with. And, lastly, there 
 is nothing more common than that the loyalty 
 of a zealous and patriotic subject should be 
 rewarded by the patronage, or, at least, by the 
 protection, of the civil magistrate, — and that 
 an act of transgression against the laws should 
 be visited by an act of vengeance on the part 
 of him who is a terror to evil doers, while a 
 praise to such as do well. And thus it is too, 
 
4a SERMON II. 
 
 that we are under a lawgiver in iieaven who is 
 able both to save and to destroy. Now so long 
 as the work of religious instruction can be up- 
 held by such analogies as these, — so long as 
 the relations of civil or of domestic society can 
 be employed to illustrate the relation between 
 God and the creatures whom he has formed, — 
 so long as the recollections of daily experience 
 can thus be applied to the method of the divine 
 administration, — a vein of perspicuity will ap- 
 pear to run through the clear and rational ex- 
 position of him who has put all the mist and all 
 the technicals of an obscure theology away 
 from him. All his lessons will run in an easy 
 and direct train. Nor do we see how it is pos- 
 sible to be bewildered amongst such explana- 
 tions, as are suggested by the most ordinary 
 doings and concerns of human society ; — and 
 did the preacher only confine himself to such 
 doctrine, as that God rewards the upright, and 
 punishes the rebellious, and upon the impulse 
 of that compassion which belongs to him, takes 
 again the penitent into acceptance, and in the 
 great day of remuneration, will give unto every 
 man according to his works, — did he only con- 
 fine himself to truths so palpable, and build 
 upon it applications so obvious, as just to urge 
 us to the performance of duty by the promised 
 reward, and deter us from the infraction of it by 
 the severities of the threatened punishment, 
 and call us to reformation by affectionately 
 
SERMON II. 49 
 
 pleading with us the mercies of God, and warn 
 us with all his force and all his fidelity, that 
 should we persist in obstinate impenitence we 
 shall be cut off from happiness forever, — there 
 might be something to terrify,— but there would 
 at least be nothing to darken or to perplex us in 
 these interpretations,— nothing that would not 
 meet common intelhgence, and be helped for- 
 ward by all the analogies of common observa- 
 tion, — and should this therefore prove the 
 great burden of the preacher's demonstration, 
 we should be the last to reproach him, as a 
 dealer in parables, or as a dealer in mysteries. 
 To attach us the more to this rational style of 
 preaching, we cannot but perceive that it ob- 
 tains a kind of experimental countenance from 
 the actual distinctions of character which are 
 realized in the peopled world around us. Can 
 any thing be more evident than that there is a 
 line of separation between the sensual and the 
 temperate, between the selfish and the disinter- 
 ested, between the sordid and the honourable ; 
 or if you require a distinction more strictly re- 
 ligious, between the profane and the decent 
 keeper of all the ordinances ? Do not the'for- 
 mer do what, in th^ matter of it, is contrary to 
 the law of God, and the latter do what, in the 
 matter of it, is agreeable to that law ? -Here 
 then at once we witness the two grand divi- 
 sions of human society, in a state of real and vi- 
 sible exemplification — ^^and what more is neces- 
 7 
 
50 SERMON U. 
 
 sary than just to employ the most direct and 
 intelHgible motives of conduct, for persuading 
 men to withdraw from one of these divisions, 
 and pass over to the other of them ? Surely it 
 is just as we occupy the higher and the lower 
 places in the scale of character, that we shall 
 be found on the right and on the left hand of 
 the judge on the day of reckoning: And what 
 more obvious way than of preparing a people 
 for eternity — than just to point our urgency to 
 the one object of prevailing upon men to cross 
 the line of separation, to cease from the iniqui- 
 ties which abound on the one side of it, and to 
 put on the reformations which are practised on 
 the other side of it ? For this purpose, what 
 else is to be done than plainly to tell the whole 
 amount of the interest and obligation which 
 lies on the side of virtue, and as plainly to tell 
 of the ruin and the degradation both of cha- 
 racter and of prospect which lie on the side of 
 vice, — to press the accomplishments of a good 
 life on the one hand, and to denounce the false- 
 hoods and the dishonesties, and the profliga- 
 cies, of a bad life on the other, — in a word, to 
 make our hearers the good subjects of God, 
 much in the same way, as you would propose 
 to make them the good servants of their mas- 
 ter, or the good subjects of their government; 
 and thus by the simple and direct enforce- 
 ments of duty, to shun all the difficulties of a 
 
SERMON 11. 51 
 
 scholastic theology, and to keep clear of all 
 its mysteriousness. 
 
 It is needless to say how much this process 
 is reversed by many a teacher of Christianity. 
 It is true, that they hold out most prominently 
 the need of some great transition — but it is a 
 transition most mysteriously different from the 
 act of crossing that line of separation, to which 
 we have just been adverting. Without refer- 
 ring at all in fact to any such line, do they come 
 forth from the very outset with one sweeping 
 denunciation of worthlessness and guilt, which 
 they carry round among all the varieties of 
 character, and by which they affirm every in- 
 dividual of the human race, to be an undone 
 sinner in the sight of God. Instead of bidding 
 him look to other sinners less deformed by 
 blemishes, and more rich in moral accomplish- 
 ments, than himself, and then attempt to re- 
 cover his distance from the divine favour by the 
 imitation of them, they bid him think of the 
 awful amount of debt and of deficiency that 
 lies between the lawgiver in heaven, and a 
 whole world guilty before him. They speak 
 of a depravity so entire, and of an alienation 
 from God so deep, and so universal, as posi- 
 tively to obliterate that line of separation which 
 is supposed to mark off those, who, upon the 
 degree of their obedience, are rightful claim- 
 ants to the honours of eternity, from those, 
 who, upon the degree of their disobedience, 
 
52 SERMON IL 
 
 are the wretched outcasts of condemnation. 
 They reduce the men of all casts and of all 
 characters, to the same footing of worthless- 
 ness in the sight of God ; and speak of the 
 evil of the human heart in such terms, as will 
 sound to many a mysterious exaggeration, and. 
 like the hearers of Ezekiel, will these not be 
 able to comprehend the argument of the 
 preacher, when he tells them, though in the 
 very language of the Bible, that they are the 
 heirs of wrath ; that none of them is righteous, 
 no not one ; that all flesh have corrupted their 
 ways, and have fallen short of the glory of God ; 
 that the world at large is a lost and a fallen 
 world, and that the natural inheritance of all 
 who live in it, is the inheritance of a temporal 
 death, and a ruined eternity. 
 
 When the preacher goes on in this strain, 
 those hearers whom the Spirit has not con- 
 vinced of sin will be utterly at a loss to under- 
 stand him, — nor are we to wonder, if he seem to 
 speak to them in a p?irable, when he speaks of 
 the disease, — that all the darkness of a parable 
 V / should still seem to hang over his demonstra- 
 ^ tions, when, as a faithful expounder of the re- 
 vealed will and counsel of God, he proceeds to 
 tell them of the remedy. For God hath not 
 only made known the fearful magnitude of his 
 reckoning against us, but he has prescribed, 
 and with that authority which only belongs to 
 him, the way of its settlement ; and he has told 
 
SERMON 11. 53 
 
 us that all .the works and all the efforts of un- 
 renewed nature are of no avail, in gaining us 
 acceptance, and that he has laid the burden of 
 our atonement on him who alone was able to 
 bear it; and he not only invites, but he com- 
 mands, and he beseeches us, to enter into 
 peace and pardon on the footing of that expia- 
 tion which Christ hath made, and of that right- 
 eousness 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 agam, 
 ere we be meet for the inheritance of the 
 saints; and still for this object does he point 
 our eyes to the great Mediator who has under- 
 taken, not merely for the forgiveness, but who 
 has undertaken for the sanctification of all who 
 put their trust in him; arfd he announces that 
 out of his fulness there ever come forth sup- 
 plies of strength for the new obedience of new 
 creatures in Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, it is 
 when the preacher is unfolding this scheme of 
 salvation,— 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 fre- 
 quent employment for the work of these very 
 peculiar explanations,— it is, when instead of 
 illustrating his subject by those analogies of 
 common life which might have done for men 
 
54 . SERMON IL 
 
 of an untainted nature, but which will not do 
 for the men of this corrupt world, he faithfully 
 unfolds that economy of redemption which God 
 hath actually set up for the recovery of our de- 
 generate species, — it is then, that to a hearer 
 still in darkness, the whole argument sounds 
 as strangely and as obscurely, as if it were 
 conveyed to him in an unknown language, — it is 
 then, that the repulsion of his nature to the 
 truth as it is in Jesus, finds a willing excuse in 
 the uttfer mysteriousness of its articles, and its 
 terms; and gladly does he put away from him 
 the unwelcome message, with the remark, that 
 he who delivers it, 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 the great 
 majority of hearers, this imputation of mysteri- 
 ousness 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 doc- 
 trine, and abounding in the terms, and uttered 
 in the cadence of orthodoxy. Of this we are 
 perfectly aware. The point to carry with the 
 great bulk of hearers is, not to conquer their 
 disgust at the form of sound words, but to con- 
 quer their resistance to the power of them ; to 
 alarm them by the consideration, that the in- 
 fluence of the lesson is altogether a distinct 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 Ob 
 
 matter from the pleasantness of the song, — that 
 their ready and delighted acquiescence in the 
 preaching of the faith, may consist with a total 
 want of obedience to the faith, — 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 dis- 
 tinct error from the one we have been combat- 
 ing, — a weed which grows abundantly in an- 
 other quarter of the field altogether, — a per- 
 verseness of mind, more deceitful than the 
 other, and perhaps still more unmanageable, 
 and against which, the faithful minister has to 
 set himself amongst that numerous class of pro- 
 fessors, who like to hear of the faith, but never 
 apply a single practical test to the question, 
 Am I in the faith ? who like to hear of regene- 
 ration, 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 through him strengthening them 
 but never enter into the important personal in- 
 quiry, Is he really strengthening me, and am L 
 by my actual victory over the world, and my 
 actual progress in the accomplishments of per- 
 sonal Christianity, bearing evidence upon my- 
 self that I have a real part and interest in these 
 things? 
 
m SERMON 11. 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the existence 
 of such a class, — and under another text, there 
 could be no difficulty in finding out a scriptural 
 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 Apostles 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 doc- 
 trine of the New Testament, — there is one 
 class, we have every warrant for believing, 
 from whom the word will not return unto him 
 void, — and there is another clase who will be 
 the willing hearers, but not the obedient doers 
 of the word: But there is still a third class, made 
 up of men of cultivated literature, and men of 
 polished and respectable society, and men of 
 a firm secular intelligence in all the ordinary 
 matters of business, who, at the same time, 
 possessing no sympathies whatever with the 
 trufe spirit and design of Christianity, are ex- 
 ceedingly shut up, in all the avenues both of 
 their heart and understanding, against the pe- 
 culiar teaching of the gospel. Like the hear- 
 er3 of Ezekiel, they feel an impression of mys- 
 teriousness. There is a certain want of adjust- 
 ment between the truth as it is in Jesus, and 
 the prevaihng style of their conceptions. All 
 their views of human life, and all the lessons 
 / they may have gathered from the school of civil 
 
SERMON II. 5lf 
 
 or classical morality, and all their preferences 
 for what they count the clearness and the ra- 
 tionality of legal preaching, and all the predi- 
 lections 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 guilt which they have 
 incurred under the judgment of a spiritual law, 
 enter as so many elements of dislike in their 
 hearts, towards the whole tone and character 
 of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. And 
 they go to envelop the subject in such a shroud 
 of mysticism to their eyes, that many of the 
 preachers of the gospel are, by them, resisted 
 on the same plea with the prophet of old, to 
 whom his contemptuous countrymen meant to 
 attach the ridicule and the ignominy of a pro- 
 verb, when they said, — he is a dealer in para- 
 bles. 
 
 We mistake the matter, if we think that the 
 offence of the cross has yet ceased from the 
 land. We mistake it, if we think that the per- 
 secution 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 Christ Jesus our Lord. We 
 utterly mistake it, if we think that Christianity 
 is not even to this very hour the same very pe- 
 culiar thing that it was in the days of the Apos- 
 
58 SERMON E 
 
 ties, — that it does not as much signalize and 
 separate us from a world lying in wiekedness, 
 — that the reproach cast upon Paul, that he 
 was mad, because be was an intrepid follower 
 of Christ, is not still readj to be preferred 
 against everj faithful teacher, and everj con- 
 sistent disciple of the faith,— and that. Under 
 the terms of methodism, and fanaticism, and 
 mysticism, there is not ready to be discharged 
 Upon them from the thousand batteries of a 
 hostile and unbelieving world, as abundant a 
 shower of invective 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 observations. We ask them, 
 in the first place, if they have ever, to the satis- 
 faction 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, shall be found to attach to the very language, 
 and to the very doctrine of God's own commu- 
 nication ? What if it be indeed the truth of 
 
SERMON II. 59 
 
 God? What if it be the very language of the 
 offended lawgiver ? What if they be the only 
 overtures of reconciliation, upon the accept- 
 ance 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 believeth on him shall not be 
 confounded. He further speaks of our personal 
 preparation for heaven — and here, too, may his 
 utterance sound mysteriously in your hearing, 
 as he tells that without holiness no man can 
 see God,— and that we are without strength 
 while we are without the Spirit to make us holy 
 —and that unless a man be born again he shall 
 not enter into the kingdom 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 should, 
 under the operation of those great provisions 
 which are set up in the New Testament for 
 creating us anew unto good works, conform 
 himself unto that doctrine of grace by which he 
 is brought to deny ungodliness and worldly 
 lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly 
 
60 SERMON hi 
 
 in the present evil world. We again ask thera, 
 if all this be offensive to their taste, and utterly 
 revolting to their habits and inclinations, and 
 if they turn with disgust from the bitterness 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 thi? 
 very Bible, whose phraseology and whose doc- 
 trine 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 foolish- 
 ness 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, ye are none of his; when 
 it tells of the gospel being hid, — but hid ot 
 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 gos- 
 pel of Christ, who 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 mes- 
 sage of the gospel, — the men whose natural 
 taste appears to offer an invincible barrier 
 against the reception of its truths, — the men 
 who, upon the plea of mysteriousness, or the 
 plea of fanaticism, or the plea of excessive 
 and unintelligible peculiarity, are most ready 
 to repudiate the whole style and doctrine of 
 
SERMON IT, 61 
 
 the New Testament, — let us assure them that 
 the time may yet come, v^hen they shall ren- 
 der to this very gospel the most striking of all 
 acknowledgments, even by sending to the door 
 of its most faithful ministers, and humbly cra- 
 ving from them their explanations and their 
 prayers. It indeed offers an affecting contrast 
 to all the glory of earthly prospects, and to all 
 the vigour of confident and rejoicing health, 
 and to all the activity and enterprise of busi- 
 ness, when the man who made the world his 
 theatre, and felt his mountain to stand strong 
 on the fleeting foundation of its enjoyments 
 and its concerns, — when he comes to be bowed 
 down with infirmity, or receives from the trou- 
 ble within, the solemn intimation that death 
 is now looking to him in good earnest : When 
 such a man takes him to the bed of sickness, 
 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 the anti- 
 cipations of vengeance away from him? S^ure 
 we are, that we never in these affecting circum- 
 stances — through which you have all to pass — 
 we never saw the man who could maintain a 
 stability, and a hope, from the sense of his own 
 righteousness ; but who, if leaning on the right- 
 eousness of Christ, could mix .a peace and an 
 
62 SERMOiN 11. 
 
 elevation with his severest agonies. We never 
 saw the expiring mortal who could look with 
 an undaunted eye on God as his lawgiver; but 
 often has all its languor been lighted up with 
 joy at the name of Christ as his Saviour. We 
 never saw the dying acquaintance, who, upon 
 the retrospect of his virtues and of his doings, 
 / could prop the tranquillity of his spirit on the 
 expectation of a legal reward. O no! this is 
 not the element which sustains the tranquillity 
 of death beds. It is the hope of forgiveness. 
 It is a believing sense of the efficacy of the 
 atonement. It is the prayer of faith, offered 
 up in the name of him who is the Captain of all 
 our salvation. It is a dependence on that power 
 which can alone impart a meetness for the in- 
 heritance of the saints, and present the spirit 
 holy, and unreproveable, and unblameable, 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 import* 
 ance, why put them away from you now.'^ You 
 will recur to them then, and for what.^ that 
 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 moment 
 with the guik of ingratitude and forgetfulneai 
 
SERMOM a. 63 
 
 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 har- 
 dened 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 conscience, and in riveting your distaste 
 for holiness, will be accumulated into such abar- 
 rier in the way of your return to God, as stamps 
 upon death-bed conversions, a grievous unlike- 
 lihood, 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 salva- 
 tion." 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 THE PREPARATION NECESSARY FOR UNDERSTANDING 
 THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 Matthew xiii. 11, 12. 
 
 • He answered and said unto them, Because it is giv^ii 
 unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of hea- 
 ven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, 
 to him shall be given, and he shall have mo? e abundance ; 
 but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away 
 even that he hath." 
 
 It is of importance to mark the principle of 
 distribution on which it is given to some to know 
 tlie 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 desire 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 dili- 
 gently, and striving laboriously, to do all that 
 they know to be the will of God. With the 
 
SERMON III. 65 
 
 latter, there may be neither the habit of prayer, 
 nor the habit of inquiry, nor the habit of obe- 
 dience. 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 re- 
 spectful attention to the truths of the gospel, 
 and shall now confine ourselves chiefly to the 
 object of encouraging and directing those who 
 feel the mysteriousness of these truths, and long 
 for light to arise in the midst of it ; — shall ad- 
 dress ourselves to those who have an honest 
 anxiety after that truth which is unto salvation, 
 but find the way to it beset with many doubts 
 and' many perplexities, — to those who are im- 
 pressed with a general conviction on the side 
 of Scripture, but in whose eyes a darkness im- 
 penetrable still broods over its pages, — to those 
 who are haunted by a sense of the imperious 
 necessity of religion, and at the same time can- 
 not 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 re- 
 cords the veil still remains untaken away. 
 
 In the further prosecution of this discourse, 
 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 mysteries of the 
 gospel ; and, in the second place, how it is that 
 in many cases these mysteries are evolved 
 
 9 
 
66 SERMON III. 
 
 upon the mind in a clear and convincing mani- 
 festation. 
 
 I. First, then, we ought to have an honest 
 desire after hght, and if we have this desire, it 
 will not remain unproductive. There is a con- 
 nexion repeatedly announced to us in Scrip- 
 ture 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 ob- 
 taining 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 thou- 
 sands to whom the Bible is a sealed book, and 
 who are satisfied that it should remain so, who 
 share in the impetuous contempt of the Phari- 
 sees against a doctrine to which they are alto- 
 gether blind, who have no understanding of the 
 matter, and no wish that it should be other- 
 wise, — and unto them it will not be given to 
 know the mysteries of the kingdom 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 unquenchable thirst after the mysteries of 
 the gospel ; who, like the prophet in the Apo- 
 calypse, weep much because the book is not 
 opened to them; who complain of darkness, 
 like the Apostles of old when they expostulated 
 
SERMON m. 67 
 
 with their Teacher because he spoke in paya- 
 bles, and, like them, who go to him with their 
 requests for an explanation. These shall find 
 that what they cannot do for themselves, the 
 Lion of the tribe of Judah will do for them. 
 He will prevail to open the book, and to loose 
 the seals thereof There is something they 
 already have, even an honest wish to be illu- 
 minated, and to this more will be given. They 
 are a^ake to the desirableness, they are 
 awake to the necessity of a revelation, which 
 they have not yet gotten, — and to them be- 
 longs the promise of, Awake, O sinner, and 
 Christ shall give thee light. 
 
 Secondly, We ought to have a habit of pray- 
 er conjoined with a habit of inquiry; and to 
 this more will be given. We have already ad- 
 verted 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 operation 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- ^ id therefore it is evident 
 that it is not in the act ci looking away from 
 the written revelation, but in the act of looking 
 towards it, that the wished-for illumination 
 will at length come into the mind of an in- 
 quirer. Let your present condition then b^ 
 
68 SERMON lU. 
 
 that of a darkness as helpless and as unattain- 
 able as can possibly be imagined, there still 
 remains an obvious and practicable direction 
 which you can be doing with in the mean time. 
 You can persevere in the exercise of reading 
 your Bible. There you are at the place of 
 meeting between 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 Bi- 
 ble to wait upon God, to wait upon him with 
 patience, 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 marvel- 
 lous light of the gospel. 
 
 And we have also adverted already, though 
 in a very general way, to the difference in point 
 of result between the active inquiries of a man 
 who 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 personal attempt after this object, the 
 exercise of prayer, and a reverential sense of 
 his dependence on God. The latter is just as 
 active, and just as inquisitive as the former. 
 The difference between them does not lie in 
 the one putting forth diligence without a feel- 
 ing of dependence, and the other feeling de- 
 pendence, without a putting forth of diligence 
 He who is in the right path towards the attain- 
 ment of light, combines both these properties. 
 
SERMON llf. 69 
 
 ft is through the avenues of a desirous heart, 
 and of an exercised understanding, and of sus- 
 tained attention, and of faculties in quest of 
 truth, and labouring after the possession of it, 
 that God send^ into the mind his promised 
 manifestations. All this exercise on the one 
 hand, without such an acknowledgment of him 
 as leads to prayer, will be productive of no- 
 thing in the way of spiritual discernment. And 
 prayer, without this exercise, is the mere form 
 and mockery of an acknowledgment. He who 
 calls upon us to hearken diligently, when he 
 addresses us by a living voice, does in effect 
 call upon us to read and to ponder diligently 
 when he addresses us by a written message. 
 To ask truth of God, while we neglect to do 
 for this object what he bids us, is in fact not 
 to recognise God, but to insult him. It is to 
 hold out the appearance of presenting our- 
 selves before him, while we are not doing it at 
 the place of meeting, which he has assigned 
 for us. It is to address an imaginary Being, 
 whom we have 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 substan- 
 tial characters of prayer. It may amount to 
 the seeking of those who shall not be able to 
 enter the strait gate. It falls short of the 
 
70 SERMON III. 
 
 striving of those who take the kingdom of hea- 
 ven by force, and of whom that kingdom suf- 
 fereth violence. 
 
 He who without prayer looks confidently for- 
 ward to success as the fruit of hisow^n investi- 
 gations, is not walking humbly with God. If 
 he were humble he would pray. But whether 
 is he the more humble who joins with a habit 
 of prayer, all those accompanying circum- 
 stances which God hath prescribed, or he who, 
 in neglect of these circumstances, ventures 
 himself into his presence in the language of 
 supplication ? There may be the show of hu- 
 mility in confiding the whole cause of our spi- 
 ritual and saving illumination to the habit of 
 praying for it to God. But if God himself tell 
 us, that we must read, and seek, and meditate, 
 then it is no longer humility to keep by the 
 solitary exercise of praying. It is in fact, keep- 
 ing pertinaciously by our own way, heedless 
 of his will and his way altogether. It is ap- 
 proaching God in the pride of our own under- 
 standing. It is detaching from the whole work 
 of seeking after him some of those component 
 parts which he himself hath recommended. In 
 the very act of making prayer stand singly out 
 as the alone instrument of success, we are in fact 
 drawing the life and the spirit out of prayer 
 itself; and causing it to wither into a thing of 
 no power and no significancy in the sight of 
 God. It is not the prayer of acknowledgment, 
 
SERMON III. 71 
 
 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 un- 
 less it comes from the heart of a man who 
 manifests a principle of submission 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 pre- 
 pare you for the reception of another advice 
 besides that of reading or praying for the at- 
 tainment of that manifestation which you are 
 in quest of, — and that is, doing. There is an 
 alarm raised in many a heart at the very sug- 
 gestion of doing for an inquirer, lest he should 
 be misled as to the ground of his jus4;ification ; 
 lest among the multitude or the activity of his 
 works, he should miss the truth, that a man is 
 accepted, 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 delusive confi- 
 dence, and presumptuously try to force his own 
 way to heaven, without the rocognition of the 
 gospel or any of its peculiarities. Now, doing 
 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 
 hypocrisy. If he both read and pray, it is far 
 
72 SERMON III. 
 
 more likeJj that he will be brought unto the 
 condition of a man being justified through faith 
 in Christ, than that he will rest hi& hopes be- 
 fore God in the mere exercise of reading. If 
 he both do and pray, it is far more likely that 
 he will come to be established in the right- 
 eousness of Christ, as the foundation of all his 
 trust, than that he will rest upon his own right- 
 eousness. For a man to give up sin at the 
 outset, is just to do what God wills him at the 
 outset. For a man at the commencement of 
 his inquiries, to be strenuous in the relinquish- 
 ment of all that he knows to be evil, is just to 
 enter on the path of approach towards Chri-st, 
 in the very way that Christ desires him. He 
 who Cometh unto me must forsake all. For a 
 man to put forth an immediate hand to the do- 
 ing of the commandments, while he is groping 
 his way towards a firm basis on which he might 
 rear his security before God, is not to deviate 
 or diverge from the Saviour. He may do it 
 with an eye of most intense earnestness to- 
 wards the Saviour, — and while the artificial 
 interpreter of Christ's doctrine holds him to be 
 wrong, Christ himself may recognise him to be 
 one of those who keep his sayings, and to whom 
 therefore he stands pledged to manifest him- 
 self. The man in fact by strenuously doing, is 
 just the more significantly and the more ener- 
 getically praying. He is adding one ingre- 
 dient to the business of seeking, without which 
 
SERMON in. 7* 
 
 the other ingredient would be in God's sight 
 an abomination. He is struggling 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 dangerous 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 still 
 and be satisfied. The more, in fact, that the 
 man's conscience is exercised and enlightened 
 (and what more fitted than wilful sin to deafen 
 the voice of conscience altogether ?) the less will 
 it let him alone, and the more will it urge him 
 onward to that righteousness which is the 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 prosecution of it, the worthlessness of all 
 that man can do for his meritorious acceptance 
 with the Lawgiver — and the deep ungodliness 
 of character which adheres to him — and the suit- 
 ableness of Christ's atonement to all his felt ne- 
 cessities, and all his moral aspirations — and the 
 need in which he stands of a regenerating in- 
 fluence, to make him a willing and a spiritual 
 subject of God. Let us see whether, though 
 
 10 
 
74 SERMON III. 
 
 the light which he at length receives be mar- 
 vellous, the waj 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 manifestations of the kingdom 
 of grace, and to the discernment of all its 
 iQysteries. 
 
 Though, to the natural eye, the doctrine 
 of Christ be not plain, the way is plain by 
 w hich 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 
 faculty. It is he who is sending through this 
 organ, the whispers of his own voice to the ear 
 of the inner man. If we go along with the 
 movement, he will follow it up by other move- 
 ments. He will visit him who is the willing 
 subject of his first influences by higher demon- 
 strations. He will carry forward his own work 
 in the heart of that man, who, while acting up- 
 on the suggestions of his own moral sense, is in 
 
SERMON III. 75 
 
 fact acting in conformity 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 ways, and 
 to turn him to the practice of all that he knows 
 to be right, — the Spirit will connect these inci- 
 pient 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 doc- 
 trine of Christ is shrouded in 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 be- 
 cause 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 neglect 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 
 
76 SERMON III. 
 
 open and acquirable to all. And, on the day of 
 judgment, th^re will not be found a single in- 
 stance of a man condemned because of unbe- 
 lief, who sought to the uttermost of his oppor- 
 tunities ,' and evinced the earnestness of his de- 
 sire 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 oi 
 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 des- 
 pised by the accomplished adepts of a syste- 
 matic and articled theology. But God will 
 not despise it. He will not leave your long- 
 ings for ever unsatisfied. He will not keep 
 you standing always at the threshold of vain 
 desires and abortive endeavours. That faith, 
 which is the gift of God, you have already at- 
 tained in a degree, if you have obtained a ge- 
 neral conviction of the importance and reality 
 of the whole matter. He will increase that 
 faith. Act up to the light that you have gotten 
 by reading earnestly, and praying importunate- 
 ly, and striving laboriously, — and to you more 
 will be given. You will at length obtain a 
 
SERMON III. n 
 
 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 pre- 
 ciousness. You will know what it is to be esta- 
 blished upon him. The natural legality of your 
 hearts will give way to the pure doctrine of ac- 
 ceptance with God, through faith in the blood of 
 a crucified Saviour. The sanctifying influence 
 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 workman- 
 ship in Christ Jesus, by your abounding in all 
 those fruits of righteousness which are through 
 him, to the praise and glory of the Father. 
 
 II. We shall now 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 manifestation. 
 
 And here let it be distinctly understood, 
 that the way in many cases may be very far 
 from the way in all cases. The experience 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 attempts to realize the very process 
 by which another has been called out of dark- 
 ness to the marvellous light of the gospel. 
 
 Referring, then, to those grounds of mysteri- 
 ousness which we have already specified in a 
 
7a SERMON HI. 
 
 former discourse, — God may so manifest himself 
 to the mind of an inquirer, as to convince him, 
 that all those analogies of common life which 
 are taken from the relation of a servant to his 
 master, or of a son to his father, or of a subject 
 to his sovereign, utterly fail in the case of man, 
 as he is by nature, in relation to his God. A 
 servant may discharge all his obligations; a 
 son may acquit himself of all his duties, or may^ 
 with his occasional failures, and his occasional 
 chastisements, still keep his place in the instinc- 
 tive affection of his parents ; and a subject may, 
 persevere in unseduced loyalty to the earthly go- 
 vernment 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 earth- 
 ly 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 attachment, from his family, 
 which he can desire, and so be satisfied. The 
 earthly sovereign may have all that allegiance 
 from a loyal subject, who pays his taxes, and 
 never transgresses his laws, which he expects or 
 cares for, and so be satisfied. But go upward 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 
 
SERMON III. 79 
 
 as, 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 superintendence of an 
 eye that never slumbers, and of a hand that is 
 never weary. Now, all we require is a fair esti- 
 mate of the claims of such a God. Does he 
 ask too much, when he asks the affections of a 
 heart that receives its every beat, and its every 
 movement, from the impulse of his power ? Does 
 he ask too much, when he asks the devoted- 
 ness of a life, which owes its every hour and its 
 every moment to him, whose right hand pre- 
 serves us continually ? Has he no right to com- 
 plain, when he knocks at the door of our hearts, 
 and, trying to possess himself of the love tind 
 the confidence of his own creatures, he finds 
 that all their thoughts, and all their pursuits, 
 and all their likings, are utterly away from him? 
 Is there no truth, and no justice, in the charge 
 which he prefers against us, — when surrounded 
 as we are by the gifts of nature and of provi- 
 dence, all of which are his, the giver is mean- 
 while forgotten, and, amid the enjoyments of 
 his bounty, we live without him in the world. 
 If it indeed be true, that itis his sun which lights 
 us on our path, and his earth on which we tread 
 so firmly, and his air which circulates a fresh- 
 
80 SERMON HI. 
 
 ness around our dwellings, and his rain which 
 feeds all the luxuriance that is spread around 
 us, and drops upon every field the smiling pro- 
 mise of abundance for the wants of his depend- 
 ent 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 remem- 
 brance ? that the whole man should be other- 
 wise engaged, than with a sense of him, and the 
 habitual exercise of acknowledgment to him ?^ 
 that in fact the full play of his re2:ards should 
 be expended on the things which are formed^ 
 and through the whole system of his conduct 
 and his affairs, there should be so utter a neglect 
 of him who formed them ? Surely if this be the 
 true description of man, and the character of 
 his heart in reierence to God, then 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 in- 
 jured and offended Lawgiver offer to make it 
 the subject of any communication, it is our part 
 humbly to listen and implicitly to follow it. 
 
 And here it is granted, that amongst the men 
 who are utter strangers to this communica- 
 tion, you meet with the better and the worse ; 
 and that there is an obvious line of distinction 
 which marks off the base and the worthless 
 amongst them, from those of them who are the 
 valuable and the accomplished members of so- 
 ciety. And yet do we aver, that one may step 
 
SERMON III. 81 
 
 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 un- 
 trodden gulf of separation, — that, with all the 
 justice which rules their transactions, and all 
 the honour which animates their bosoms, and 
 all the compassion which warms their hearts, 
 and streams forth either in tears of pity, or in 
 acts of kindness, upon the miserable, — with all 
 these virtues which they do have, and which 
 serve both to bless and to adorn the condition 
 of humanity, there is one virtue, which, prior 
 to the reception and the influence of the gos- 
 pel 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 occa- 
 sional remembrance of him; but there is no af- 
 fection for him. This is the charge which we 
 carry round amongst all the sons and daughters 
 of Adam, who have not submitted themselves to 
 the only name that is given under heaven where- 
 by 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 beauteously reflected the more amia- 
 ble and endearing attributes of character. But 
 we aflirm, 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 
 11 
 
82 SERMON III. 
 
 presiding influence over all the children of our 
 degraded and undone nature. We ask you to 
 collect all the scattered remnants of what is 
 great, and of what is graceful in accomplish- 
 ments that may have survived the fall of our 
 first parents ; and we pronounce, of the whole 
 assemblage, that they go not to alleviate, by 
 one iota, the burden of that controversy which 
 lies between God and their posterity, — that 
 throughout all the ranks and diversities of cha- 
 racter which prevail in the world, there is one per- 
 vading affection of enmity to him ; that the man 
 of talents forgets that he has nothing which he 
 did not receive, and so, courting, by some lofty 
 enterprise of mind, the gaze of this world's ad- 
 miration, he renounces his God, and makes an 
 idol of his fame, — that the man of ambition feels 
 not how subordinate he is to the might and the 
 majesty of his Creator, but turning away all 
 his reverence from him, falls down to the idol of 
 power, — that the man of avarice withdraws all 
 his trust from the living God, and, embarking 
 all his desire in the pursuit of riches, and all 
 his security in the possession of them, he makes 
 an idol of wealth, — that, descending 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 anticipations: And, amid all the love they 
 
SERMON III. 83 
 
 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 influ- 
 ences of what is seen and what is sensible, that 
 the invisible God is scarcely ever thought of, 
 and his character not at all dwelt on with de- 
 light, and his will never admitted to an habi- 
 tual and a practical ascendency over their con- 
 duct, so as to make it true of all, and of every 
 one of us, that there is none Avho understand- 
 etb, 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 mysterious- 
 ly. If the Spirit have not convinced him of sin, 
 and he have not learned to submit his charac- 
 ter to the lofty standard of a law which offers 
 to subordinate to the will of God, not merely the 
 whole habit of his outward history, but also the 
 whole habit of his inward affections,both the dis- 
 ease and the remedy are alike unknown to him. 
 His character may be fair and respectable in the 
 eyes of men ; but it will not carry upon it one 
 feature <5f that spirituality and holiness, and re- 
 lish for those exercises that have God for their 
 immediate object, which assimilate men to an- 
 gels, and make them meet for the joys of eterni- 
 ty. His morality will be the morality of life, and 
 his virtues will be the virtues of the world; and 
 
a4 SERMON III. 
 
 all the mystery of a parable, or of a dark saying, 
 will appear to hang over the terms and the ex- 
 planations of that gospel, against the light of 
 which, the god of this world blindeth the minds 
 of those who believe not. 
 
 Let us therefore reflect that the principle 
 on which the peculiarities of the gospel look 
 so mysterious, is just the feeling which nature 
 has of its own sufficienc}' ; and, that you may 
 renounce this delusive feeling altogether, we 
 ask you to think, how totally destitute you are 
 of that which God chiefly requires of you. He 
 requires your heart, and we venture to say of 
 every man amongst you, who has heretofore 
 lived in neglect of the great salvation, that his 
 heart, with all its objects and affections, is away 
 from God, — that it is not a sense of oWigation 
 to him which forms the habitual and the pre- 
 siding influence of its movements, — that there- 
 fore every day and every hour of your history 
 in the world, accumulates upon you the guilt 
 of a disobedience of a far deeper and more of- 
 fensive character than even the disobedience 
 of your more notorious and external violations. 
 , There is ever with you, lying folded in the re- 
 y cesses of your bosom, and pervading the whole 
 system both of your desires and of your doings, 
 that which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all 
 its moral hideousness in the sight of God. 
 There is a rooted preference of the creature to 
 the Creator. There is a full desire after the 
 
SERMON III. 85 
 
 gift, and a listless ingratitude towards the giv- 
 er. There in an utter devotedness, in one shape 
 or other, to the world that is to be burnt up, — 
 and an utter forgetfulness, amid all your forms, 
 and all jour decencies, of him who endureth for 
 ever. There is that universal attribute of the 
 carnal mind — enmity against God ; and we 
 affirm that, with this distaste in your hearts 
 towards him, you, on every principle of a spirit- 
 ual and intelligent morality, are as chargeable 
 with rebelHon against your Maker, as if some 
 apostate angel had been your champion, and 
 you warred with God, under the waving stand- 
 ards of defiance. It was to clear away the 
 guilt of this monstrous iniquity that Christ died. 
 It was to make it possible for God, with his 
 truth unviolated, and his holiness untarnished^ 
 and all the hig-h attributes of his eternal and 
 unchangeable nature unimpaired, to hold out 
 forgiveness to the world, — that propitiation was 
 made through the blood of his own Son, even 
 that God might be just, while the justitier of 
 them who believe in Jesus. It is to make it 
 possible for man to love the Being whom nature 
 taught him to hate and to fear, that God now 
 lifts, from his mercy-seat, a voice of the most 
 beseeching tenderness, and smiles upon the 
 world as God in Christ, reconciling the world 
 unto himself, and not imputing unto them their 
 trespasses. It was utterly to shift the moral 
 constitution of our minds, — an achievement 
 beyond any power of humanity, — that the Sa- 
 
86 SERMON III. 
 
 viour, after he died and rose again, obtained 
 the promise of the Father, even that Spirit, 
 through whom alone the fixed and radical dis- 
 ease of nature can be done away. And thus, 
 by the ministration of the baptism of the Holy 
 Ghost, does he undertake not only to improve 
 but to change us, — not only to repair but to 
 re-make us, — not only to amend our evil works, 
 but to create us anew unto good works, that 
 we may be the workmanship of God in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord. These are the leading and 
 essential peculiarities of the New Testament. 
 This is the truth of Christ ; though to the ge- 
 neral mind of the world it is the truth of Christ 
 in a mystery. These are the parables which 
 the commissioned messengers of grace are to 
 deal out to the sinful children of Adam, — and 
 dark as they may appear, or disgusting as they 
 may sound in the ears of those who think that 
 they are rich, and have need of nothing, they 
 are the very articles upon which hope is made 
 to beam on the heart of a converted sinner — 
 and peace is restored to him, — and acceptance 
 with God is secured by the terms of an unalter- 
 able covenant, — and the only effective instru- 
 ments of a vital and substantial reformation 
 are provided ; so that he who before was dead 
 in trespasses and sins is quickened together 
 with Christ, and made alive unto God, and 
 renewed again after his image, and enabled to 
 make constant progress in all the graces of 
 a holy and spiritual obedience. 
 
SERMON IV, 
 
 AN' ESTIMATE OF THE MORALITY THAT IS 
 WITHOUT GODLINESS. 
 
 Job ix. 30—33. 
 
 •' 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 
 man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should 
 come together in judgment. Neither is there any day's- 
 man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." 
 
 To the people of every Christian country the 
 doctrine of a Mediator between God and man 
 is familiarized by long possession ; though to 
 many of them it be nothing more than the fa- 
 miliarity of a name recognised as a well-known 
 sound by the ear, without sending one fruit- 
 ful or substantial thought into the understand- 
 ing. For, let it be observed, that the list- 
 less acquiescence of the mind, in a doctrine, to 
 the statement or to the explanation of which 
 it has been long habituated, is a very different 
 thing from the actual hold which the mind 
 takes of the doctrine,— insomuch that it is very 
 
88 SERMON IV. 
 
 possible for man to be a lover of orthodoxy, 
 and to sit with complacency under its ministers, 
 and to be revolted by the heresies of those who 
 would either darken or deny any of its articles, 
 — and, in a word, to be most tenacious in his 
 preference for that form of words to w^hich he 
 has been accustomed; while to the meaning 
 of the words themselves, the whole man is in a 
 state of entire dormancy, and delighted though 
 he really be by the utterance of the truth, ex- 
 hibits not in his person, or in his history, one 
 evidence of that practical ascendency which 
 Christian truth is sure to exert over the heart 
 and the habits of every genuine believer. 
 
 In the midst of all this dimness, and all this 
 indolence about the realities of salvation, it is 
 refreshing to view the workings of a mind that 
 is in earnest ; and of a mind too, which, instead 
 of being mechanically carried forward in the 
 track of a prescribed or authoritative orthodoxy, 
 is prompted to all its aspirations by a deep feel- 
 ing of guilt, and of necessity. Such we con- 
 ceive to have been the mind of Job, to whom 
 the doctrine of a Redeemer had not been expli- 
 citly unfolded, but who seems at times to have 
 been favoured with a prophetic glimpse of him 
 through the light of a dim and distant futurity. 
 The state of his body, covered as it was with 
 disease, makes him an object of sympathy. But 
 there is a still deeper and more attractive sym- 
 pathy excited by the state of his soul, labour- 
 
SERMON IV. ag 
 
 ing under the visitation of a hand that was too 
 heavy for him; called out to a combat with 
 God, and struggling to maintain it; at one 
 time, tempted to measure the justice of his 
 cause with the righteousness of Heaven's dis- 
 pensations ; at another, closing his complaint 
 with the murmurs of a despairing acquies- 
 cence ; and at lengtli brought, through all the 
 varieties of an exercised and agitated spirit, 
 to submit himself to God, and to repent in dust 
 and in ashes. 
 
 There is a darkness in the book of Job. He, 
 at one time, under the soreness of his calamity, 
 gives way to impatience; and, at another, he 
 seems to recall the hasty utterance of his more 
 distempered moments. He, in one place, fills 
 his mouth with arguments; and, in another, he 
 appears willing to surrender them all, and to 
 dechne the unequal struggle of man contending 
 with his Maker. He is evidently oppressed 
 throughout by a feeling of want, without the 
 full understanding of an adequate or an appro- 
 priate remedy. Now, it does give a higher 
 sense of the value of this remedy, when we are 
 made to witness the unsatisfied longings of one 
 wholivedinadarkand early period of the world 
 —when we hear him telling, as he does in these 
 verses, where the soreness lies, and obscurely 
 guessing at the ministration that issuited to it, — 
 nor do we know a single passage of the Bible 
 which carries home with greater effect the ne- 
 12 
 
90 SERMON IV. 
 
 cessity of a Mediator, than that where Job, oB 
 his restless bed, is set before us, wearying him- 
 self in the hopeless task of arguing with God, 
 and calling for some day's-man betwixt them, 
 who might lay his hand upon them both. 
 
 The afflictions which were heaped upon Job 
 made him doubt his acceptance with his Maker. 
 This was the great burden of his complaint, and 
 the recovery of this acceptance was the theme 
 of many a fruitless and fatiguing speculation. 
 We have one of these speculations in the verses 
 which are now submitted to you ; and as they 
 are four in number, so there is such a distinc^ 
 lion in the subjects of them, that the passage 
 naturally resolves itself into four separate to- 
 pics of illustration. In the 30th verse, we 
 have an expedient proposed by Job, for the 
 purpose of obtaining the acceptance which he 
 longed after : " If I wash myself with sijow 
 water, and make my hands never so clean." In 
 the 31st verse, we have the inefficacy of this 
 expedient: "Yet shall thou plunge me in 
 the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor 
 me." In the 3M verse, he gives the reason 
 of this inefficacy : " For he is not a man, as I 
 am, that I should answer him, and we should 
 come together in judgment." And in the 33d 
 verse, he intimates to us the right expedient, 
 under the form of complaining that he. himself 
 has not the benefit of it : " Neither is there 
 
SERMON IV. §i 
 
 any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his 
 hand upoa us both.'' 
 
 I. It is not to be wondered at, that even a 
 mistaken efficacy should be ascribed to snow 
 water, in the country of Job's residence, where 
 snow, if ever it fell at all, must have fallen rare- 
 ly, at very extraordinary seasons, and in the 
 more elevated parts of his neighbourhood. This 
 rarity, added to its unsullied whiteness, might 
 have given currency to an idea of its efficacy 
 as a purifier, beyond what actually belonged to 
 it. Certain it is, too, that snow water, like water 
 deposited from the atmosphere in any other 
 form, does not possess that hardness which 
 is often to be met with in spring water. 
 But however this be, and whether the popular 
 notion of the purifying virtues of snow water, 
 taken up by Job, be well founded or not, we 
 have here an expedient suggested for making 
 the hands clean, and the man pure and accep- 
 table in the sight of God, — a method proposed 
 within the reach of man, and which man can 
 perform, for making himself an object of com- 
 placency to his Maker, — a method too, which is 
 quite effectual for beautifying all that meets 
 the discernment of the outward eye, and 
 which is here set before us as connected with 
 the object of gaining the eye of that high and 
 heavenly Witness, with whom w^e have to do. 
 This is what we imderstand to be represented by 
 
92 SERMON IV. 
 
 washing with snow water. It comprehends all 
 that man can do for washing himself, and for 
 making himself clean in the sight of God. 
 J ob complains of the fruitlessness of this expe- 
 dient, and perhaps mingles with his complaints 
 the reproaches of a spirit that was not yet sub- 
 dued to entire acquiescence in the righteousness 
 of God. Let us try to examine this matter, 
 and, if possible, ascertain whether man is able, 
 on the utmost stretch of his powers and of his 
 performances, to make himself an object of ap- 
 probation to his Judge. 
 
 Without entering into the metaphysical con- 
 troversy about the extent or the freedom of hu- 
 man agency, let it be observed, that there is 
 a plain and a popular understanding on the 
 subject of what man can do, and of what he 
 cannot do. We wish to proceed on this under- 
 standing for the present, and to illustrate it 
 by a few examples. Should it be asked, if a 
 man can keep his hands from stealing, it would 
 be the unhesitating answer of almost every one 
 that he can do it, — and if he can keep his 
 tongue from lying, that he can do it, — and if he 
 can constrain his feet to carry him every Sab- 
 bath to the house of God, that he can do this 
 also, — and if he can tithe his income, or even 
 reducing himself to the necessaries of life, make 
 over the mighty sacrifice of all the remainder 
 to the poor, that it is certainly possible for him 
 to do it, — and if he can keep a guard upon hi« 
 
SERMON IV. 93 
 
 iips, so- that not one whisper of malignity shall 
 escape from them,, that he can also prescribe 
 this task to himself, and is able to perform it, — 
 and if he can read much of his Bible, and ut- 
 ter many prayers in private, that he can do it, — 
 and if he can assemble his family on the morn- 
 ing and the evening of every day, and go 
 through the worship of God along with them, 
 that all this he can do, — that all this lies with- 
 in the compass of human agency. 
 
 Let any one man do, then, what all men think 
 it possible for him to do, and he will wear upon 
 his person the visible exhibition of much to re- 
 commend him to the favourable judgment of 
 his fellows. He will be guilty of no one trans- 
 gression against the peace and order of society. 
 He will be correct, and regular, and completely 
 inoffensive. He will contribute many a deed 
 of positive beneficence to the welfare of those 
 around him ; and m«iy even, on the strength of 
 his many decencies, and many observations, 
 hold out an aspect of religiousness to the ge- 
 neral eye of the world. There will be a wide 
 and most palpable distinction of character be- 
 tween him, and those who, at large from the 
 principle of self control, resign themselves to 
 the impulse of every present temptation ; and 
 are either intemperate, or dishonest, or negli- 
 gent of ordinances, just as habit, or the urgency 
 of their feelings and their circumstances, may 
 happen to have obtained the ascendency over 
 them. These do not what they might, and 
 
94 SERMON IV. 
 
 what, in common estimation, they can do ; and 
 it is just because the man has pat forth all his 
 strenuousness to the task of accomplishing all 
 that he is able for, that he looks so much more 
 seemly than those who are beside him, and 
 holds out a far more engaging display of what 
 is moral and praise-worthy to all his acquain- 
 tances. 
 
 If. I will not be able to convince you how 
 superficial the reformation of all these doings 
 is, without passing on to the 31st verse, 
 and proving, that in the pure eye of God the 
 man who has made the most copious application 
 in his power of snow water to the visible con- 
 duct, may still be an object of abhorrence ; and 
 that if God enter into judgment with him, he 
 will make him appear as one plunged in the 
 ditch, his righteousness as filthy rags, and him- 
 self as an unclean thing. There are a thou- 
 sand things which, in popular and understood 
 language, man can do. It is quite the general 
 sentiment, that he can abstain from stealing, and 
 lying, and calumny,— that he can give of his sub- 
 stance to the poor, and attend church, and pray, 
 and read his Bible, and keep up the worship of 
 God in his family. But, as an instance of dis- 
 tinction between what he can do, and what he 
 cannot do, let us make the undoubted asser- 
 tion, that he can eat wormwood, and just put 
 the question, if he can also relish wormwood. 
 That is a different affair. I may command the 
 performance ; but have no such command over* 
 
SERMON IV. 95 
 
 my organs of sense, as to command a liking, or 
 a taste for the performance. The illustration 
 is homely; but it is enough for our purpose, 
 if it be ellective. 1 may accomplish the doing 
 of what God bids; but have no pleasure in 
 God himself The forcible constraining of 
 the hand, may make out many a visible act 
 of obedience, but the relish of the heart may 
 refuse to go along with it. The outer man 
 may be all in a bustle about the command- 
 ments of God, while to the inner man God 
 is an offence and a weariness. His neighbours 
 may look at him, and all that their eye can 
 reach may be as clean as snow water can make 
 it. But the eye of God reaches a great deal 
 farther. He is the discerner of the thoughts 
 and intents of the heart, and he may see the 
 foulness of spiritual idolatry in every one of its 
 receptacles. The poor man has no more con- 
 quered his rebellious affections, than he has 
 conquered his distaste for wormwood. He may 
 fear God; he may hsten to God; and, in out- 
 ward deed, may obey God. But he does not, 
 and he will not, love God ; and while he drags 
 a heavy load of tasks, and duties, and observ- 
 ances after him, he Hves in the hourly violation 
 of the first and greatest of the commandments. 
 Would any parent among you count it enough 
 that you obtained a service like this from one 
 of your children.^ Would you be satisfied with 
 the obedience of his hand, while you knew that 
 the affections of his heart were totally away from 
 
m SERMON IV. 
 
 you ? Let every one requirement, issued from 
 the chair of parental authority, be most rigidly 
 and punclually done by him, would not the sul- 
 lenness of his alienated countenance turn the 
 whole of it into bitterness ? It is the heart o{ 
 his son which the parent longs after; and the 
 lurking distaste and disaffection which rankle 
 there, can never, never be made up by such an 
 obedience, as the yoked and the tortured negro 
 is compelled to yield to the whip of the over- 
 seer. The service may be done ; but all that 
 can minister satisfaction in the principle of the 
 service, may be w ithheld from it ;. and though 
 the very last item of the bidden performance 
 is rendered, this will neither mend the defor- 
 mity of the unnatural child, nor soothe the feel- 
 ings of the afflicted and the mortified father. 
 
 God is the Father of spirits ; and the willing 
 subjection of the spirit is that which he requires 
 of us; " My son, give me thy heart;" and if the 
 heart be withheld, God says of all our visible 
 performances, " To what purpose is the multi- 
 tude of your sacrifices unto me ?" The heart 
 is his requirement; and full, indeed, is the title 
 which he prefers to it. He put life into us ; and 
 it is he who hath drawn a circle of enjoyments, 
 and friendships, and interests around us. Every 
 thing that we take delight in, is ministered to 
 us out of his hand. He pHes us every moment 
 with his kindness ; and when at length the gift 
 stole the heart of man away from the Giver, so 
 that he became a lover of his own pleasure, 
 
SERMON IV. 97 
 
 rather than a lover of God, even then would 
 he not leave us to perish in the guilt of our 
 rebellion. Man made himself an alien, but 
 God was not willing to abandon him; and, ra- 
 ther than lose him for ever, did he devise a way 
 of access by which to woo, and to welcome him 
 back again. The way of our recovery is indeed 
 a way that his heart was set upon ; and to prove 
 it, he sent his own eternal Son into the world, 
 who unrobed him of aH his glories, and made 
 himself of no reputation- He had to travel in 
 the greatness of his strength, that he might un- 
 bar the gates of acceptance to a guilty world; 
 and now that, in full harmony with the truth 
 and the justice of God, sinners may draw nigh 
 through the blood of the atonement, what is 
 the wonderful length to which the condescen- 
 sion of God carries him ? Why, he actually be- 
 seeches us to be reconciled ; and, with a tone 
 more tender than the affection of an earthly 
 father ever prompted, does he call upon us to 
 turn, and to turn, for why should we die ? If, 
 after all this, the antipathy of nature to God 
 atill cleave to us ; if, under the power of this 
 antipathy, the service we yield be the cold and 
 unwilling service of constraint ; if, with many 
 ©f the visible outworks of obedience, there be 
 also the strugglings of a reluctant heart to take 
 siway from this obedience all its cheerfulness, 
 is not God defrauded of his offering? Does 
 there not rest on the moral aspect of our cha- 
 i^acter, in reference to him, all the odiousness of 
 
 13 
 
98 SERMON IV. 
 
 unnatural children ? Let our outer doings be 
 what the J may, does there not adhere to us the 
 turpitude of having deeply revolted against that 
 Being whose kindness has never abandoned us? 
 And, though pure in the eye of our fellows, 
 and our hands be clean as with snow water, is 
 there nothing in our hearts against which a 
 spiritual law may denounce its severities, and 
 the giver of that law may lift a voice of right- 
 eous expostulation ^ '^ Hear ye now what the 
 Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the 
 mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. 
 Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, 
 and ye strong foundations of the earth : for the 
 Lord hath a controversy with his people, and 
 he will plead with Israel. O my people, what 
 have I done unto thee, and wherein have I 
 wearied thee ? testify against me." 
 
 It is not easy to lay open the utter naked- 
 ness of the natural heart in re ference to God ; 
 ov to convince the possessor of it, that, under 
 the guise of his many plausibilities, there may 
 lurk that which gives to sin all its hideousness. 
 The mere man of ordinances cannot acquiesce 
 in what he reckons to be the exaggerations of 
 orthodoxy upon this subject ; nor can he at all 
 conceive how it is possible that, with so much 
 of the semblance of godliness about him, there 
 should, at the same time, be within him the 
 very opposite of godliness. It is, indeed, a dif- 
 ficult task to carry upon this point the con- 
 viction of hiiu who positively loves the Sabbath. 
 
SERMON IV. 99 
 
 and to whom the chime of its morning bells 
 brings the delightful associations of peace and 
 ofsacredness, — who has his hours of prayer, at 
 which he gathers his family around him, and 
 his hours of attexiJaace on that house where 
 the man of God deals out his weekly lessons to 
 the'assembled congregation. It may be in vain to 
 tell him, that God in fact is a weariness to his 
 heart, when it is attested to iiim by his own 
 consciousness; that when the preacher is before 
 him, and the people are around him, and the 
 professed object of their coming together is to 
 join in the exercise of devotion, and to grow in 
 the knowledge of God, he finds in fact that all 
 is pleasantness, — that his eye is not merely 
 filled with the public exhibition, and his ear 
 regaled by the impressiveness of a human voice, 
 but that the interest of his heart is completely 
 kept up by the succession and variety of the 
 exercises It may be in vain to tell him, that 
 this religion of taste, or this religion of habit, 
 or this religion of inheritance, may utterly con- 
 sist with the deep and the determined worldli- 
 ness of all his affections, — that he whom he 
 thinks to be the God of his Sabbath is not the 
 God of his week ; but that, throughout all the 
 successive days of it, he is going astray after the 
 idols of vanity, and living without God in the 
 world. This is demonstration enough of all his 
 forms, and all his observations, being a mere 
 surface display, without a living principle of 
 piety. But perhaps it may serve more effectu- 
 
too SERMON rV'. 
 
 ally to convince him of it, should we ask him. 
 how his godliness thrives in the closet, and 
 what are the workings of his heart, in the ab- 
 stract and solitary hour of intercourse, with the 
 unseen Father. In church, there may be much 
 to interest him, and to keep him alive. But 
 when alone, and deserted by all the accom- 
 paniments of a solemn assembly, we should 
 like to know with what vivacity he enters on 
 the one business of meditating on God, and 
 holding converse with God. Is the sense of 
 the all-seeing and ever-present Deity enough 
 for him ; and does love to God brighten and 
 sustain the moments of solitary prayer ? The 
 mind may have enough to interest it in 
 church; but does the secret exercise of fellow- 
 ship with the Father bring no distaste, and no 
 weariness along with it ? Is it any thing more 
 than the homage of a formal presentation ? 
 And when the business of devotion is thus un- 
 peopled of all its externals, and of all its ac- 
 cessaries ; when thus reduced to a naked exer- 
 cise of spirit, can you appeal to the longings, 
 and the affections of that spirit, as the essen- 
 tial proof of your godhness ? And do you never, 
 on occasions like this, discover that which is in 
 your hearts, and detect their enmity to him 
 who formed them ? Do you afford no ground for 
 the complaint which he uttered of old, when he 
 said, " Have I been a wilderness unto Israel, 
 and a land of darkness ?" And do you not perr 
 ceive that with this direction of your feelings 
 
SERMON IV. 101 
 
 and your desires away from the living God, 
 though you be outwardly clean, as by the 
 operation of snow water, he may plunge you 
 in the ditch, and make your own clothes to ab- 
 hor you ? 
 
 We shall conclude this part of our subject 
 with two observations. 
 
 First. The efforts of nature may, in point of 
 inadequacy, be compared to the application of 
 snow water. Yet there is a practical mischief 
 here, in which the zeal of controversy, bent on 
 its one point, and its one principle, may uncon- 
 sciously involve us. We are not, in pursuit of 
 any argument whatever, to lose sight of efforts. 
 We are not to deny them the place, and the 
 importance which the Bible plainly assigns to 
 them ; nor are we to forbear insisting upon their 
 performance by men, previous to conversion, 
 and in the very act of conversion, and in every 
 period of the progress, however far advanced 
 it may be, of the new creature in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. We speak just now of men, previ- 
 ous to conversion, and we call to your remem- 
 brance the example of John the Baptist. The 
 injudicious way in which the doings of men 
 have been spoken of, has had practically this 
 effect on many an inquirer. Since doing is of 
 so little consequence, let us even abstain from 
 it. Now the forerunner of Christ spake a very 
 different language. He unceasingly called up- 
 on the people to do ; and this was the very 
 preaching which the divine wisdom appointed 
 
102 SERMON IV. 
 
 as a preparation for the Saviour. " He that 
 hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath 
 none; and he that hath meat, let him do like- 
 wise." — " Exact no more than that which is ap- 
 pointed." — '^ Do violence to no man ; neither 
 accuse any falsely, and be content with your 
 wages." Was not John, then, it may be said, 
 a mere superficial reformer.^ Had he stopped 
 short at this, he would have been no better. His 
 teaching could have done no more than is done 
 by the mere application of snow water. But 
 he did not stop here. He told the people that 
 there was a preacher, and a preaching to come 
 after him, in comparison of which he and his 
 sermons were nothing. He pointed the eye and 
 the expectation of his hearers full upon one 
 that was greater than himself; and, while he 
 baptized with water unto repentance, and call- 
 ed upon the people to frame their doings, he 
 told them of one mightier than he, who was to 
 baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
 
 And, Secondly, That you may be convinced 
 ©f the utter necessity of such a baptism, let us 
 afiirm the inadequacy of all the fairest virtues 
 and accomplishments of nature. God has, for 
 the well-being of society, provided man with 
 certain feelings and constitutional principles of 
 action, which lead him to a conduct beneficial 
 to those around him ; to which conduct he may 
 be carried by the impulse of these principles, 
 with as little reference to the will of God, as a 
 mother, among the inferior animals^ when coi>- 
 
SERMON IV. loa 
 
 strained by the sweet and powerful influences 
 of natural affection, to guard the safety, and 
 provide for the nourishment of her young. 
 Take account of these principles as they exist 
 in the bosom of man, and you there find compas- 
 sion for the unfortunate ; the shame of detection 
 in any thing mean, or disgraceful ; the desire 
 of standing well in the opinion of his fellows; 
 the kindlier charities, 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 ap- 
 petite 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 pro- 
 portions among the individuals of human kind, 
 give rise to the varied hues of character among 
 them. Some possess them in no sensible de- 
 gree; and they are pointed at with abhorrence, 
 as the most monstrous and deformed of the spe- 
 cies. Others have an average share x)f them; 
 and they take their station amongst the com- 
 mon-place characters of society. And others 
 go beyond the average; and are singled out 
 from amongst their fellows, as the kind, the 
 amiable, the sweet-tempered, the upright^ 
 whose hearts swell with honourable feelings 
 or whose pulse beats high in the pride of in- 
 tegrity. 
 
 Now, conceive for a moment, that the belief 
 «f a God were to be altogether expunged from 
 
104 SERMON IV. 
 
 the world. We have no doubt that society 
 would suffer most painfully in its temporal inter- 
 ests by such an event. But the machine of soci- 
 ety might still be kept up ; and on the face of 
 it you might still meet with the same gradations 
 of character, 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 adminis- 
 tration altogether ; and that he were to consign 
 it, with all its present accommodations, and all its 
 natural principles, to some far and solitary place 
 beyond the limits of his economy— we should still 
 find ourselves in the midst of a moral variety of 
 character; and man, sitting in judgment over 
 it, would say of some, that they are good, and of 
 others, that they are evil. Even in this desolate 
 region of atheism, the eye of the sentimentalist 
 might expatiate among beauteous and interest- 
 ing spectacles,-amiable mothers shedding their 
 graceful tears over the tomb of departed in- 
 fancy; high-toned integrity maintaining itself 
 unsullied amid the allurements of corruption; 
 benevolence plying its labours of usefulness ; 
 and patriotism earning its proud reward, in the 
 testimony of an approving people. Here, then, 
 you have compassion, and natural affection, and 
 justice, and public spirit — but would it not be 
 a glaring perversion of language to say, that 
 there was godliness in a world, where there 
 was no feeling and no conviction about 
 t3lod ? 
 
SERMON IV. 105 
 
 In the midst of this busy scene, let God re- 
 veal himself, not to eradicate these principles 
 of action — but giving his sanction to whatsoever 
 things are just, and lovely, and honourable, and 
 of good report, to make himself knov^n, at the 
 s. me time as the Creator and Upholder of all 
 things, and as the Being with whom all his ra- 
 tional offspring had to do. Is this solemn an- 
 nouncement fi om the voice of the Eternal to 
 make no difference upon them ? Are those prin- 
 ciples which might flourish and be sustained on 
 a soil of atheism, to be counted enough even af- 
 ter the wonderful truth of a living and a reign- 
 ing God has burst upon the world ? You are 
 just ; — right, indispensably right. You say you 
 have asserted no more than your own. But this 
 property is not your own. He gave it to you, 
 and he may call upon you to give to him an 
 account of your stewardship. You are compas- 
 sionate ; — right also. But what if he 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 ex- 
 penditure, he call upon you to love your neigh- 
 bour as yourself, and to maintain this principle 
 at the expense of self-denial, and in the midst 
 of manifold provocations ? You love your chil- 
 dren; — 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 chil- 
 dren, and still be evil ? and that if you love fa* 
 
 U 
 
106 SERMON IV. 
 
 ther, or mother, or wife, or children, more than 
 him, you are not worthy of him ? The lustre 
 of your accomplishments dazzles the eye of 
 your neighbourhood, and you bask with a de- 
 lighted heart in the sunshine of glory. Bui 
 what if he should say, that his glory, and not 
 your own, should be the constant aim of your 
 doings ? and that if you love the praise of 
 men more than the praise of God, you stand, 
 in the pure and spiritual records of heaven, 
 convicted of idolatry ? You love the things of 
 the world ; and the men of the world, coming 
 together in judgment upon you, take no of- 
 fence at it. But God takes offence at it. He 
 says, — and is he not right in saying ? — that if 
 the gift withdraw the affections from the Giver, 
 there is something wrong ; that the love of these 
 things is opposite to the love of the Father; and 
 that, unless you withdraw your affections from a 
 world that perisheth, you will perish along with 
 it. Surely if these, and such like principles, 
 may consist with the atheism of a world where 
 God is unthought of, and unknown, — ^you 
 stand convicted of a still deeper and more 
 determined atheism, who, under the revela- 
 tion 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 Y,. 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF MEN, COMPARED WITH TH^E 
 JUDGMENT OF GOD. . 
 
 ' With me il is a very small thing that I should be judged 
 of you, or of man's judgment ; — he that judgeth ma 
 is the Lord." 1 Corinthians, 3, 4. 
 
 III. When two parties meet together on the 
 business of adjusting their respective claims, or 
 when, in the language o£our text, they come to- 
 gether in judgment, the principles on which 
 they proceed must depend 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 differ- 
 ent case of man's entering into judgment with 
 his God. Job seems to have been aware of 
 this difference, and at times to have been hum- 
 bled by it. In reference to man, he stood on 
 triumphant ground, and often spoke of it in a 
 
lOB SERMON V. 
 
 style of boastful vindication. No one could 
 impeach his justice. No one could question his 
 generosity. And he made his confident ap- 
 peal to the remembrance of those around him, 
 when he says of himself, that he delivered the, 
 poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him 
 that had none to help him ; that the blessing of 
 him that was ready to perish came upon him, 
 and he caused the widow's heart to siiig for joy; 
 that he put on righteousness, and it clothed 
 him, and his judgment was as a robe and a dia- 
 dem ; that he was eyes to the blind, and feet 
 was he to the lame ; that he was a father to the 
 poor, Jind the cause that he knew not, he 
 searched out. On these grounds did he chal- 
 lenge the judgment of man, and actually ob- 
 tained it. For we are told, because he did all 
 this, that when the ear heard him, then it bless- 
 ed him, and when the eye saw him, it gave wit- 
 ness unto him. 
 
 There is not a more frequent exercise of 
 mind in society, than that by which the mem- 
 bers of it form and declare their judgment of 
 each other — and the work of thus decidino: is a 
 work which they all share in, and on which, 
 perhaps, there is not a day of their lives 
 wherein they are not called upon to expend 
 some measure of attention and understanding — 
 and we know not if there be a single topic 
 that more readily engages the conversation of 
 human beings — and often do we utter our 
 own testimony, and hear the testimony of others 
 
SERMON V. 109 
 
 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 soRie have actually exceeded — and 
 thus it is, that it appears to require a very ex- 
 tended scale of reputation to take in all the 
 varieties of human character — and while the 
 lower extremity of it is occupied by the dis- 
 honest, and the perfidious, 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 unsulHed 
 excellence — and their walk in the world is dig- 
 nified by the reverence of many salutations — 
 and as we hear of their truth and their upright- 
 ness, and their princely liberalities, ^nd 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 accomplish- 
 ments, there is enough to satisfy man, and to 
 carry the admiration of man ? and can we won- 
 der if, while we gaze on so fine a specimen of 
 our nature, we should not merely pronounce 
 upon him an honourable sentence at the tri- 
 bunal of human judgment, but we should con- 
 ceive of hiiA that he looks as bright and fault- 
 less 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 distinction 
 
110 SERMON V. 
 
 of our text; if a man may have the judgment 
 of his fellows, and yet be utterly unfit for con- 
 tending in judgment with God ; if there be 
 any emphasis in the consideration, that he is 
 God, and not man; or any delusion in conceiv- 
 ing of him, that he is altogether like unto our- 
 selves,— -may not all that ready circulation of 
 praise, and of acknowledgment, which obtains 
 in society, carry a most ruinous, and a most be- 
 witching influence along with it ? Is it not pos- 
 sible that on the applause of man there may be 
 reared a most treacherous self-complacency r 
 Might not we build a confidence before God, 
 on this sandy foundation ? Think you not, that 
 it is just this ill-supported confidence which 
 shuts out from many a heart the humiliating 
 doctrine of the gospel ? Is there no &uch ima- 
 gination as that because we are so well able 
 to stand our ground before the judgment of 
 the world, we shall be equally well able to stand 
 our ground before the judgment-seat of the 
 great day ? Are there not many who, upon this 
 very principle, count themselves rich and to 
 have need of nothing ? And have you never 
 met with men of character, and estimation in 
 society, who, surrounded by the gratulations 
 of their neighbourhood, find the debasing 
 views of humanity, which are *set before 
 us in the New Testament, to be beyond their 
 comprehension ; who are utterly in the dark, as 
 to the truth and the justness of such represen- 
 tations, and with whom the voice of God is 
 
SERMON V. Ill 
 
 llierefbre deafened by the voice and the testi- 
 mony of men ? They see not themselves in that 
 character of vileness and of guilt which he 
 ascribes to them. They are blind to the prin- 
 ciple of the text, that he is not a man ; and that 
 they may not be able to answer him, though 
 they may be able to meet the every reproach, 
 and to hold out the lofty vindication against 
 every charge, which any one of their fellows 
 may prefer. And thus it is, that many live in 
 the habitual neglect of a salvation which they 
 cannot see that they require ; and spend their 
 days in an insidious security, from which no- 
 thing but the voice of the last messenger, or the 
 call of the last trumpet, shall awaken them. 
 
 To do away this delusion, we shall advert 
 to two leading points of distinction between 
 the judgment of men and that of God. There 
 is a distinction founded upon the claims which 
 God has a right to prefer against us, when corn- 
 pared with the claims which our fellow-men 
 have a right to prefer against us ; — and there is 
 a distinction founded upon that clearer and 
 more elevated sense which God has of that 
 holiness without which no man shall see his 
 face, of that moral worth without which we are 
 utterly unfit for the society of heaven. 
 
 The people around me have no right to com- 
 plain, if I give to every man his own; or, in other 
 words, if I am true to all my promises, and faith- 
 ful to all my bargains ; and if what I claim as jus- 
 tice to myself, I most scrupulously render to 
 
112 SERMON V. 
 
 others, when they are in like circumstances with 
 myself. Now^, let me do all this, and I earn 
 amongst my fellows, the character of a man of 
 honour and of equity. Did I live with such a cha- 
 racter in an unfallen world, these virtues w ould 
 not at all signalize me, though the opposite vices 
 would mark me out for universal surprise and 
 indignation. But it so happens that I live in 
 a world full of corruption, where deceit and 
 dishonesty are common ; — where, though the 
 higher degrees of them are spoken of with ab- 
 horrence, the lower degrees of them are looked 
 at with a very general connivance ; — w here the 
 inflexibility of a truth that knows not one art of 
 concealment, and the delicacy of an honour 
 that was never tainted, w ould greatly signalize 
 me ; — and thus it is, that though I went not be- 
 yond the strict requirements of integrity, yet 
 by my nice and unvarying fulfilment of them, 
 should I rise above the ordinary level of human 
 reputation, and be rewarded by the most flat- 
 tering distinctions of human applause. 
 
 But again, 1 may in fact give to others more 
 than their own ; and in so doing I may earn the 
 credit of other virtues. I may gather an addi-i 
 tional lustre around my character, and collect 
 from those around me the tribute of a still 
 louder and more rapturous approbation. I 
 may have a heart constitutionally framed to the 
 feeling and the exercise of compassion. I may 
 scatter on every side of me the treasures of 
 beneficence. I may have an eye for pity, and a 
 
SERMON V. 113 
 
 hand open as day for melting charity. I may 
 lay aside a large proportion of my wealth to 
 the service of others, — and what with a bosom 
 open to ev^ery impulse of pity, and with an 
 eye ever lighted up by the smile of courteous- 
 ness, and with a ready ear to all that is offered 
 in the shape of cojuplaint or supplication, I 
 may not go beyond the demands of others, but 
 I may go greatly beyond all that they have a 
 right to demand, — and if I signalized myself by 
 rendering faithfully to every man his due,— 
 still more shall I signalize myself by a kindness 
 that is never weary, by a liberality that never 
 is exhausted. 
 
 Now, we need not offer to assign the precise 
 degree to which a man must carry the exercise 
 of these gratuitous virtues, ere he can obtain 
 for them the good will, and the good opinion 
 of society. We need not say by how small a 
 fraction of his income, he may thus purchase 
 the homage of his acquaintances, — at how easy 
 a rate he may send away one person delighted 
 by his affability ; or another by the hospitality 
 of his reception; or a third by the rendering of 
 a personal service ; or a fourth by the direct 
 conveyance of A present, — or, finally, for what 
 expense he may surround himself by the grati- 
 tude of many poor, and the blessings and the 
 prayers of many cottages. We cannot bring 
 forward any rigid computation of this matter. 
 But we appeal to the experience of your own 
 history, and to your observation of others, if a 
 1^ 
 
114 SERMON V. 
 
 man might not, without any painful, or any 
 sensible surrender of enjoyment at all, stand out 
 to the eye of others in a blaze of moral reputa- 
 tion— if the substantial citizen might not, on 
 the convivialities of friendship, be indulging his 
 own taste, and at the very time be securing 
 from his pleased and satisfied guests, the attes- 
 tations of their cordiality — if the man of busi- 
 ness might not be nobly generous to his friends 
 in adversity, and at the same time be running 
 one unvaried career of accumulation — if the 
 man of society might not be charming every 
 acquaintance by the truth and the tenderness 
 of his expressions, and at the same time, instead 
 of impairing, be heightening his share of that 
 felicity, vvliich the Author of our being has an- 
 nexed to human intercourse — if a thousand 
 little acts of accommodation from one neighbour 
 to another, might not svrell the tide of praise 
 and of popularity, and yet, as ample a remain-r 
 der of pleasurable feeling be left to each as be- 
 fore. — And even when the sacrifice is more 
 painful, and the generosity more romantic, and 
 man can appeal to some mighty reduction of 
 wealth as the measure of his beneficence to 
 others, might it not be said of him, if the life 
 be more than meat, and the body than 
 raiment, that still there is left to him more 
 than he can possibly surrender? that, though he 
 strip himself of all his goods to feed the poor, 
 there remains to him that, without which all is 
 nothingness, — that, a breathing and a conscious 
 
8EIIM0N V. 115 
 
 man, he still treads on the face of our world, 
 and bears his part in that universe of life, where 
 the unfailing compassion of God still con- 
 tinues to uphold him, — that, instead of lying 
 wrapt in the insensibility of an eternal grave, 
 he has all the images of a waking existence 
 around him, and all the glories of immortality 
 before him, — that, instead of being withered to 
 a thing of nought, and gone to that dark and 
 hidden land, where all is silence and deep an- 
 nihilation, a thousand avenues of enjoyment 
 are still open to him, and the promise of a daily 
 provision is still made sure, and he is free to all 
 the common blessings of nature, and he is freer 
 still to all the consolations, and to all the pri~ 
 vileges of the gospel. 
 
 Thus it appears that after I have fultilled all 
 the claims of men, and men are satisfied, — that 
 after having gone, in the exercise of liberality, 
 beyond these claims, and men are filled with 
 delight and admiration, — that after, on the 
 footing of equal and independent rights, I have 
 come into judgment with my fellows, and they 
 have awarded to me the tribute of their most 
 honourable testimony, the footing on which 1 
 stand with God still remains to be attended to> 
 and his claims still remain to be adjusted, — 
 and the mighty account still lies uncancelled 
 between the creature and the Creator, — be- 
 tween the man who, in reference to his neigh- 
 bours, can say, I give every one his own, and 
 out of my own [expatiate in act=; of tender- 
 
lia SERMON V. 
 
 ness and generosity amongst them, and the 
 God who can say, You have nothing that you 
 did not receive, and all you ever gave is out ot 
 the ability which I have conferred upon you, 
 and this w ealth is not your ow n, but his who 
 bestowed it, and who now calls upon you to ren- 
 der an account of your stewardship,— between 
 the man, w ho has purchased by a fraction of his 
 property, the good will of his acquaintances^ 
 and the God who asserts his right to have every 
 fraction of it turned into an expression of grati- 
 tude, and devoted to his glory, — between the 
 man w ho holds up his head in society, because 
 his justice, and the ministrations of his liberali- 
 ty, have distinguished him, and the God who 
 demands the returns of duty and of acknow- 
 ledgment, for giving him the fund of these 
 ministrations, and for giving what no money 
 can purchase, — for putting the principle of life 
 into his bosom, — for furnishing him with all his 
 senses, and, through these inlets of communica- 
 tion, giving him a part, and a property, in all 
 that is around him, — for sustaining him in all 
 Ihe elements of his being, and conferring upon 
 him ail his capacities, and all his joys. 
 
 Now, what we wish you to feel is, that the 
 judgment of men may be upon your side, and 
 the judgment of God be most righteously 
 against you — that, while from the one nothing 
 is heard but admiration and gratitude, from the 
 other, there may be such a charge of sinfulness, 
 aSj when set in order before your eye, will con- 
 
SERMON V 117 
 
 vince jou, that he by whom you consist, is 
 defrauded of all his offerings, — that, while all the 
 common honesties and Immanities of social life, 
 arc acquitted to the entire satisfaction of others, 
 and to the entire purity of your own reputation 
 in the world, your whole heart and conduct 
 may be utterly pervaded by the habit of ungod- 
 liness, — that, while not one claim which your 
 neighbours can prefer, is not met most readily, 
 and discharged most honourably, the great 
 claims of the Creator, over those whom he has 
 formed, may lie altogether unheeded ; and he, 
 your constant benefactor, be not loved, — and 
 he, your constant preserver, be not depended 
 on,~ and he, your most legitimate sovereign, 
 be not obeyed, — and he, the unseen Spirit, who 
 pervades all, and upholds all, be neither wor- 
 shipped in spirit and in truth, nor vested. with 
 the hold of a rightful supremacy over your re- 
 bellious affections. 
 
 God is not man : nor can vve measure what 
 is due to him, by what is due to our fellows in 
 society. He made us, and he upholds us, and 
 at his will the life which is in us, will, like the 
 expiring vapour, pass away; and the taberna- 
 cle of the body, that curious frame-work which 
 man thinks he can move at his own pleasure, 
 when it is only in God that he moves, as well 
 as lives, and has his being, will, when abandon- 
 ed by its spirit, mix with the dust out of which 
 it was formed, and enter agani into the uncon- 
 scious glebe from which it was taken. It was, 
 
118 SERiMON V. 
 
 indeed, a wondrous preferment for unshapen 
 clay to be wrought into so fine an organic struc- 
 ture, but not more wondrous surely than that the 
 soul which animates it should have been creat- 
 ed out of nothing ; and what shall we say, if 
 the compound being so originated, and so sus- 
 tained, and depending on the will of another for 
 every moment of his continuance, is found to 
 spurn the thought of God, in distaste and disaf- 
 fection away from him? When the spirit returns 
 to him who sitteth on the throne; when the 
 question is put, Amid all the multitude of your 
 doings in the world, what have you done unto 
 me? When the rightful ascendency of his 
 claims over every movement of the creature is 
 made manifest by him who judgeth righteously; 
 when the high but just pretensions of all things 
 being done to his glory; of the entire heart be- 
 ing consecrated in everyone of its regards to his 
 person and character; of the whole man being- 
 set apart to his service, and every compromise 
 being done away, between the world on the one 
 hand, and that Being on the other, who is jea- 
 lous of his honour : — when these high preten- 
 sions are set up and brought into comparison 
 with the character and the conduct of any one 
 of us, and it be inquired in how far we have 
 rendered unto God the ever-breathing grati- 
 tude that is due to him, and that obedience 
 which we should feel at all times to be our 
 task and our obligation; how shall we fare in 
 that great day of examination, if it be found 
 
SERMON V. 119 
 
 that this has not been the tendency of our na- 
 ture at all ? and when he who is not a man 
 shall thus enter into judgment with us, how 
 shall we be able to stand ? 
 
 Amid all the praise we give and receive from 
 each other, we may have no claims to that sub- 
 stantial praise which cometh from God only. 
 Men may be satisfied, but it followeth not that 
 God is satisfied. Under a ruinous delusion 
 upon this subject, we may fancy ourselves to 
 be rich, and have need of nothing, while, in 
 fact; we are naked, and destitute, and bhnd, 
 and miserable. And thus it is, that there is a 
 morality of this world, which stands in direct 
 opposition to the humbling representations of 
 the Gospel ; which cannot comprehend what it 
 means by the utter worthlessness and depravity 
 of our nature ; which passionately repels this 
 statement, and that too on its own consciousness 
 of attainments superior to those of the sordid, 
 and the profligate, and the dishonourable ; and 
 is fortified in its resistance to the truth as it is 
 in Jesus, by the flattering testimonials which it 
 gathers to its respectability and its worth from 
 the various quarters of human society. 
 
 A just sense of the extent of claim which 
 God has upon his own creatures, would lay open 
 this hiding-place of security; would lead us to 
 see, that to do some things for our neighbours, is 
 not the same with doing all things for our Ma- 
 ker ; that a natural principle of honesty to man, 
 is altogether distinct from a principle of entire 
 
120 SERMON V. 
 
 devotedness to God ; that the tithe which we 
 bestow upon others is not an equivalent for a to- 
 tal dedication unto God of ourselves, and of all 
 which belongs to us; that we may present those 
 around us with many an offering of kindness, and 
 not present our bodies a living sacrifice to God, 
 which is our reasonable service ; that we may 
 earn a cheap and easy credit for such virtues as 
 will satisfy the world, and be utter strangers to 
 the self-denial, and the spirituality,and the morti- 
 fication, of every earthly desire, and the affection 
 for the things that are above ; — all of which 
 graces enter as essential ingredients into the 
 sanctification of the gospel. 
 
 But this leads us to the second point of dis- 
 tinction between the judgment of man and 
 that of God, — even his clearer and more ele- 
 vated sense of that holiness without which no 
 man shall see his face, and of that moral worth 
 without which we are utterly unfit for the 
 society of heaven. 
 
 Man's sense of the right and the wrong may 
 be clear and intelligent enough, in so far as that 
 part of character is concerned which renders 
 us fit for the society of earth. Those virtues, 
 without which a community could not be held 
 together, are both urgently demanded by that 
 community, and highly appreciated by it. The 
 morality of our earthly life, is a morality which 
 is in direct subservience to our earthly accom- 
 modation; and seeingthatecjuity.and humanity, 
 and civility, are in such visible and immediate 
 
SERMON V. 121 
 
 Connexion with all the security, and all the en- 
 joyment which they spread around them, it is 
 not to be wondered at, that they should throw 
 over the character of him by whom they are 
 exhibited, the lustre .of a grateful and a superior 
 estimation. And thus it is, that even without 
 any very nice or exquisite refinement of these 
 virtues, many an ordinary characterwillpass; — 
 and should that character be deformed by the 
 levities, or even by the profligacies of intem- 
 perance, he who sustains it may still bear his 
 part among the good men of society, — and keep 
 away from it all that malignity, and all that dis- 
 honesty, which have a disturbing effect on the 
 enjoyments of others, and these others will still 
 retain their kindliness for the good-humoured 
 convivialist, — and he will be suffered to retain 
 his own taste, and his own peculiarities; and, 
 though it may be true, that chastity, and self- 
 control, and the severer virtues of personal dis- 
 cipline and restraint, would in fact give a far 
 more happy and healthful tone to society than 
 at present it possesses, yet this influence is not 
 so conspicuous, and heedless men do not look 
 so far; and therefore it is, that in spite of his 
 many outward and positive transgressions of 
 the divine law, many an individual can be re- 
 ferred to, who, with his average share of the irj- 
 tegrities and the sensibilities of social life, has 
 stamped upon him the currency of a very fair 
 every-day character, who moves among bis fel- 
 lows without disgrace, and meets ^vith accept- 
 
 16 
 
122 SERMON V. 
 
 ance throughout the general run of this world's 
 companies. 
 
 If such a measure of indulgence be extended 
 to the very glaring iniquities of the outer man, 
 let us not wonder though the errors of the 
 heart, the moral diseases of the spirit, the dis- 
 organization of the inner man, with its turbu- 
 lent passions, and its worldly affections, and its 
 utter deadness to the consideration of an over- 
 ruling God, should find a very general indul- 
 gence among our brethren of the species. 
 Bring a man to sit in judgment over the de- 
 pravities of our common nature, and unless these 
 depravities are obviously pointed against the 
 temporal good of society, what can we expect, 
 but that he will connive at the infirmities of 
 which he feels himself to be so large and so 
 habitual a partaker ? What can we expect but 
 that his moral sense, clouded as it is against the 
 discernment of his own exceeding turpitude, 
 will also perceive but dimly, and feel but ob- 
 tusely, a similar turpitude in the character of 
 others? What else can we look for, than that 
 the man who fires so promptly on the reception 
 of an injury, will tolerate in his fellow all the 
 vindictive propensities ? — or, that the man who 
 feels not in his bosom a single movement of 
 principle or of tenderness towards God, will to- 
 lerate in another an equally entire habit of un- 
 godliness? — or, that the man who surrenders him- 
 self to the temptations of voluptuousness, will 
 perceive no enormity of character at all in the 
 
SERMON V. ]23 
 
 unrestrained dissipations of an acquaintance.-^ — 
 And, in a word, when [ see a man whose rights 
 I have never invaded, who has no complaint of 
 personal wronger provocation to allege against 
 me, and who shares equally with myself in na- 
 ture's blindness and nature's propensities, 1 will 
 not be afraid of entering into judgment with 
 him; — nor shall I stand in awe of any penetrating 
 glance from his eye, of any indignant remon- 
 strance from his offended sense of what is right- 
 eous, though there be made bare to his inspec- 
 tion all my devotedness to the world, and all 
 my proud disdain at the insolence of others, 
 and all my anger at the sufferings of injustice, 
 and all my indifTerence to the God who formed 
 me, and all those secrecies of an unholy and an 
 unheavenly character, which are to be brought 
 out into full manifestation on the great day of 
 the winding up of this world's history. 
 
 It is a very capital delusion that God is like 
 unto man, — " Thou thoughtest that I was alto- 
 gether such a one as thyself; but I will reprove 
 thee, and set thy sins in order before thine eyes. 
 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest 1 
 tear you in pieces, and there be none to de- 
 liver." 
 
 Man and man may come together in judg- 
 ment, and retire from each other in mutual 
 complacency. But when man and God thus 
 come together, ther^ is another principle, and 
 another standard of examination. There is a 
 claim of justice on the part of the Creator, to- 
 
124 SERMON V. 
 
 tally distinct trom any claim Avhich a fellow 
 creature can prefer, — and while the one will 
 tolerate all that is consistent with the economy 
 and the interest of the society upon earth, the 
 other can tolerate nothing that is inconsistent 
 with the economy and the character of the 
 society in heaven. God made us for eter- 
 nity. He designed us to be the members of a 
 family which never separates, and over which 
 he himself presides in the visible glory of all 
 that worth, and of all that moral excellence, 
 which belong to him. He formed us at first 
 after his own likeness ; and ere we can be re- 
 admitted into that paradise from which we 
 have been exiled, we must be created anew 
 in the image of God. These spirits must be 
 made perfect, and every taint of selfishness and 
 impurity be done away from them. Heaven 
 is the place into which nothing that is up.clean 
 or unholy can enter ; and wc are not preparing 
 for our inheritance there, unless there be gath- 
 ering upon us here, the lineaments of a celes- 
 tial character Now, a man may be accomplish- 
 ed in the moralities of civil and of social life, 
 without so much as the semblance of such a 
 character resting upon him. He may have no 
 share whatsoever in the tastes, or in the enjov- 
 ments, or in the affections of paradise. There 
 might not be a single trace of the mark of the 
 Lamb of God upon his forehead. He who 
 ponders so intelligently the secrets of the heart, 
 may be able to discover there no vestige of an} 
 
SERMON V. 125 
 
 love for himself, — no sensibility at all to what 
 is amiable or to what is great in the character 
 of the Godhead, — no desire whatever after his 
 glory, — no such feeling towards him who is to 
 tabernacle with men, as will qualify him to bear 
 a joyful part in the songs, and the praises of 
 that city which has foundations. Surrounded as 
 he is by the perishable admiration of his fellows, 
 he is altogether out of affection, and out of ac- 
 quaintance, with that Being with whom he has 
 to do ; and it will be found, on the great day 
 of the doings, and the deliberations of the judg- 
 ment-seat, that as he had no relish for God in 
 time, so is he utterly unlit for his presence, or 
 for his friendship in eternity. 
 
 It is said of God, that he created man after 
 his own image, and it was upon losing this 
 image that he was cast out of paradise : and ere 
 he can be again admitted, the image that has 
 been lost must again be formed on him. The 
 grand qualification for the society of heaven is, 
 that each of its members be like unto God. 
 In the selfish and sensual society of earth, 
 there is many a feature of resemblance to the 
 Godhead that is most readily dispensed with ; 
 and many an individual here obtains ap- 
 plause and toleration among his fellows, though 
 there is not one attribute of the saintly character 
 belonging to him. Let him only fulfil the stipu- 
 lations of integrity, and smile benignity upon 
 his friends, and render the alacrity of willing 
 and valuable services to those who have never 
 
126 SERMON V. 
 
 offended him, and on the strength of such per- 
 formances as these, may he rise to a conspicu- 
 ous place in the scale of this world's reputation. 
 But what would have been the sad event to us^ 
 had these been the only performances which 
 went to illustrate the character of the Godhead, 
 had he been a God of whom we could say no 
 more, than that he possessed the one attribute 
 of an unrelenting justice, or even that he went 
 beyond this attribute, in the exercise of kind- 
 ness to those who loved him, and in acts of 
 beneficence to those who had never offended 
 him ? Do we not owe our place and our pro- 
 spect to the love of God for his enemies ? Is it 
 not from the riches of his forbearance and long- 
 suffering, that we draw all our enjoyments in 
 time, and all our hopes for eternity ? Is it not 
 because, though grieved with sinners every 
 day, he still waitslo be gracious ; that he holds 
 out to us, his heedless and wayward children, 
 the beseeching voice of reconciliation ; and 
 puts on such an aspect of tenderness to those 
 who have not ceased from their birth to vex his 
 Holy Spirit, and to thwart him every hour by 
 the perverseness of their disobedience ? This 
 is the godlike attribute on which all the pri- 
 vileges of our fallen race are suspended ; and 
 yet against the imitation of which, nature, when 
 , urged by the provocations of injustice, rises in 
 - such a tumult of strong and impetuous resist- 
 ance. It is through the putting forth of this 
 attribute, that any redeemed sinners are to be 
 
SERMON V. 127 
 
 found among the other society of heaven ; but 
 into which no member shall be admitted out of 
 this corrupt world, till there be stamped and 
 realized on his own person, that feature of the 
 divinity to which he owes a distinction so ex- 
 alted. And tell us, ye men who are so jealous 
 of right and of honour, who take sudden fire at 
 every insult, and suffer the slightest imagina- 
 tion of another's contempt, or another's un- 
 fairness, to chase from your bosom every feel- 
 ing of complacency ; — ye men whom every fan- 
 cied affront puts into such a turbulence of 
 emotion, and in whom every fancied infringe- 
 ment stirs up the quick and the resentful ap- 
 petite for justice — how will you stand the ri- 
 gorous application of that test by which the 
 forgiven of God are ascertained, even that the 
 spirit of forgiveness is in them, and by which 
 it will be pronounced whether you are indeed 
 the children of the highest, and perfect as your 
 Father in heaven is perfect ? 
 
 But we must hasten to a close, and will there- 
 fore, barely suggest some other matters of self- 
 examination. We ask you, to think of the fa- 
 cility with which you might obtain the appro- 
 bation of men, without being at all like unto 
 God in the holiness of his character. We ask 
 you to think of the delight which he takes in 
 the contemplation of what is pure, and moral, 
 and righteous. We ask you to think how one 
 great object of his creation, was to diffuse over\ 
 the face of it a multiplied resemblance of him- 
 
128 SERMON V. 
 
 self,— and that, therefore, however fit you may 
 be for sustaining your part in the ahenated 
 community of this world, you are most as- 
 suredly unfit for the great and the general as- 
 sembly of the spirits ofjust men made perfect, 
 if unlike unto God who is in the midst of them, 
 you have no congenial delight with the Father 
 of all, in the contemplation of spiritual excel- 
 lence. Now, are you not blind to the glories 
 and the perfections of that Being who realises 
 this excellence to a degree that is infinite? 
 Does not the creature fill up all your avenues 
 of enjoyment, while the Creator is forgotten ? 
 In reference to God, is there not an utter dull- 
 ness and insensibihty of all your regards to 
 him ? If thus blind to the perception of that 
 supreme virtue and lovliness which reside in 
 the Godhead, are you not, in fact, and by na- 
 ture an outcast fromthe Godhead? And an out- 
 cast will you ever remain, until your character 
 be brought under some mighty revolutionizing 
 influence, which is able to shift the currency of 
 your desires, and to over-rule nature with all her 
 obstinate habits, aud all her ibnd and favourite 
 predilections. 
 
 These are topics of great weight and great 
 pregnancy; but we leave them to your own 
 thoughts, and only ask you at present to look 
 at the vivid illustration of them that may be 
 gathered out of the history of Job. In reference 
 to his fellows,hecouldmakeatriumphant appeal 
 to the honour and the humanity which adorn- 
 
SERMON V. 129 
 
 ed him, he could speak of the splendid career 
 ofbeneticence thai he had run, — and, in the re- 
 collection of the plaudits that had surrounded 
 him, he could boldly challenge the inspection of 
 all his neighbours, and of all his enemies, on the 
 whole tract of his visible history in the world. 
 He protested his innocence before them, and 
 even so long as he had only heard of God by 
 the hearing of the ear, did he address him in 
 the language of justification. But when God 
 at length revealed himself, — when the worth 
 and the majesty of the Eternal stood before 
 him in visible array, — when the actual presence 
 of h's Maker bronc^ht the claims of his Maker 
 to bear impressively upon his conscience, it 
 was not merely the presence of the power of 
 God which overawed him ; it was the presence 
 of the righteousness of God which convinced 
 him, — and when, from the bright assemblage 
 of all that was pure, and holy, and graceful in 
 the aspect of the Divinity, he turned the eye 
 of contemplation downward upon himself, — O 
 it is instructive to be told, how the vaunting 
 patriarch shrunk into all the depths of self- 
 abasement at so striking a manifestation ; and 
 how he said, " I have heard of thee by the hear* 
 ing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee ; 
 wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust 
 and in ashes." 
 
 It is indeed a small matter to be judged of 
 man's judgment. He who judges us is God. 
 From this judgment Ihere is no escape, and no 
 17 
 
130 SERMON V. 
 
 hiding-place. The testimony of our fellows 
 will as little avail us in the day of judgment, as 
 the help of our fellows will avail us in the hour 
 of death. We may as well think of seeking a re- 
 fuge in the applause of men, from the condem- 
 nation of God, as we may think of seeking a 
 refuge in the power or the skill of men, from 
 the mandate of God, that our breath shall de- 
 part from us. And, have you never thought, 
 when called to the chamber of the dying man, — 
 when you saw the warning of death upon his 
 countenance, and how its symptoms gathered 
 and grew, and got the ascendency over all the 
 ministrations of human care and of human ten- 
 derness, — when it every day became more vi- 
 sible, that the patient was drawing to his close, 
 and that nothing in the whole compass of art 
 or any of its resources, could stay the advances 
 of the sure and the last malady, — have you 
 never thought, on seeing the bed of the sufferer 
 surrounded by other comforters than those of 
 the Patriarch,— when, from morning to night, 
 and from night to morning, the watchful family 
 sat at his couch, and guarded his broken slum- 
 bers, and interpreted all his signals, and tried 
 to hide from his observation the tears which 
 attested him to be the kindest of parents,— 
 when the sad anticipation spread its gloomy 
 stillness over the household, and even sent 
 forth an air of seriousness and concern upon the 
 men of other families, — when you have witness- 
 ed the despair of friends, who could only turn 
 
Sermon v. isi 
 
 them to cry at the spectacle of his last agonies, 
 and had seen how little it was that weeping- 
 children and inquiring neighbours could do for 
 him, — when you have contrasted the unrelent- 
 ing necessity of the grave, with the feebleness 
 of every surrounding endeavour to ward it, has 
 the thought never entered within you ? How 
 powerless is the desire of man ! — how sure and 
 how resistless is the decree of God ! 
 
 And on the day of the second death, will it be 
 found, that it is not the imagination of man, but 
 the sentence of God that shall stand. When the 
 sound of the last trumpet awakens us from the 
 grave, and the ensigns of the last day are seen 
 on the canopy of heaven, and the tremor of the 
 dissolving elements is felt upon earth, and the 
 Son of God with his mighty angels are placed 
 around the judgment-seat, and the men of all 
 ages and of all nations are standing before it, 
 and waiting the high decree of eternity, — then 
 will it be found, that as no power of man can 
 save his fellow from going down to the grave 
 of mortality, so no testimony of man can save 
 his fellow from going down to the pit of con- 
 demnation. Each on that day will mourn 
 apart. Each of those on the left hand, en- 
 grossed by his own separate contemplation, and 
 overwhelmed by the dark and the louring fu- 
 turity of his own existence, will not have a 
 thought or a sympathy to spare for those who 
 are around him. Each of those on the right 
 hand will see and acquiesce in the righteous- 
 ness of God, and be made to acknowledge, 
 
132 - SERMON V. 
 
 that those things which are highly esteemed 
 among men are in his sight an abomination. 
 When the Judge and his attendants shall come 
 on the high errand of this world's destinies, 
 the J will come from God, — and the pure prin- 
 ciple they shall bring along with tliem from the 
 sanctuary of heaven, will be the entire subor- 
 dination of the thing formed to him who form- 
 ed it. In that praise which upon earthly feel- 
 ings the creatures offer one to another, we be- 
 hold no recognition of this principle whatever ; 
 and therefore it is, that it is so very different 
 from the praise which cometh from God only. 
 And should any one of these creatures be made 
 on that great day of manifestation, to see his 
 nakedness,~should the question, what have you 
 done unto me ? leave him speechless ; should at 
 length, convicted of his utter rebelliousness 
 against God, he try to find among the compa- 
 nions of his pilgrimage, some attestation to the 
 kindliness that beamed from him upon his fel- 
 low mortals in the world, — they will not be able 
 to hide him from the coming wrath. In the face 
 of all the tenderness they ever bore him, the se- 
 verity of an unreconciled lawgiver must have 
 upon him its resistless operation. They may 
 all bear witness to the honour and the gener- 
 osity of his doings among men, but there is not 
 one of them who can justify him before God. 
 Nor among all those who now yield him a ready 
 testimony on earth will he find a day's-man be- 
 twixt him and his Creator, who can lay his 
 hand upon them both. 
 
SERMON VI 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF A MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOJ> 
 
 AND MAN. 
 
 Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us that might lay 
 his hand upon us both." Job ix. 33 
 
 IV. The feeling of Job, at the time of his ut- 
 tering the complaint which is recorded in the 
 verses before us, might not have been altoge- 
 ther free of a reproachful spirit towards those 
 friends who had refused to advocate his cause, 
 and who had even added bitterness to his dis- 
 tress by their most painful and unwelcome argu- 
 ments. And well may it be our feeling, and that 
 too without the presence of any such ingredient 
 along with it — that there is not a man upon 
 earth who can execute the office of a day's-man 
 betwixt us and God,— that taking the common 
 sense of this term, there is none who can act as 
 an umpire between us the children of ungodH- 
 aess, and the Lawgiver, whom we have so deep- 
 ly offended ; or taking up the term that occurs 
 m the Septuagint version of the Bible, that 
 
134 SERMON VI. 
 
 amongst all our brethren of the species, not an 
 individual is to be found who, standing in the 
 place of a mediator, can lay his hand upon us 
 both. It is indeed very possible, that all this 
 may carry the understanding, and at the same 
 time have all the inefficiency of a cold and gen- 
 eral speculation. But should the Spirit, whose 
 office it is to convince us of sin, lend the pow- 
 er of his demonstration to the argument, — 
 should he divide asunder our thoughts, and en- 
 able us to see that, with the goodly semblance 
 of what is fair and estimable in the sight of 
 man, all within us is defection from the princi- 
 ple of loyalty to God, — that while we yield a 
 duty as the members of society, the duty that 
 lies upon us, as the creatures of the Supreme 
 Being, is, in respect of the spirit of allegiance 
 which gives it all its value, fallen away from, by 
 every one of us, — should this conviction cleave 
 to us like an arrow sticking fast, and w^ork its 
 legitimate influence, in causing us to feel all the 
 worthlessness of our characters, and all the 
 need and danger of our circumstances, — then 
 would the urgency of the case be felt as well as 
 understood by us, — nor should we be long of 
 pressing the inquiry of where is the day's- 
 man betwixt us that might lay his hand upon 
 us both ? 
 
 And, in fact, by putting the Mediator away 
 from you, — by reckoning on a state of safety 
 and acceptance without him, what is the 
 ground upon which, in reference to God, you 
 
SERMON VI. 135 
 
 actually put yourselves ? We speak not at pre- 
 sent of the danger of persisting in such an atti- 
 tude of independence, — of its being one of 
 those refuges of treachery in which the good 
 man of the world is often to be found,— of its 
 being a state wherein peace, when there is no 
 peace, lulls him by its flatteries into a deceitful 
 repose. We are not at present saying how ruin- 
 ous it is to rest a security upon an imposing exte- 
 rior, when in fact the heart is not right in the 
 sight of God, and while the reproving eye of him, 
 who judgeth not as man judgeth, is upon him, 
 or how poisonous is the unction that comes 
 upon the soul from those praises which upon the 
 mere exhibition of the social virtues, are rung 
 and circulated through society. But, in addition 
 to the danger, let us insist upon the guilt of thus 
 casting the offered Mediator away from us. It 
 implies, in the most direct possible way, a senti- 
 ment of the sufficiency of our own righteous- 
 ness. It is expressly saying of our obedience, 
 that it is good enough for God. It is presump- 
 tuously thinking that what pleases the world 
 may please the Maker of it, even though 
 he himself has declared it to be a world 
 lying in wickedness. There is an aggrava- 
 tion you will perceive in all this which goes 
 beyond the simple infraction of the command- 
 ment. It is, after the infraction of it, challeng- 
 ing for some remainder or for some semblance 
 of conformity, the reward and approbation of 
 the God wliose law we have dishonoured. Tt 
 
136 SERMON VL 
 
 is, after we have braved the attribute of the Ah 
 mighty's justice, by incurring its condemnation, 
 making an attempt upon the attribute itself, by 
 bringing it down to the standard of a polhited 
 obedience. It is, after insulting the throne 
 of God's righteousness, embarking in the still 
 deadlier enterprise of demolishing all the stabi- 
 lities which guard it; and spoiling it of that truth 
 which has pronounced a curse on the children 
 of iniquity, — of that holiness which cannot dwell 
 with evil, — of that unchangeableness which will 
 admit of no compromise with sinners that can 
 violate the honours of the Godhead, or weaken 
 the authority of his government over the uni- 
 verse that he has formed. It is laying those 
 paltry accomplishments which give you a place 
 of distinction among your fellows, before that 
 God of whose throne justice and judgment are 
 the habitation, and calling upon him to connive 
 at all that you want, and to look with complacen- 
 cy on all that you possess. It is to bring to the 
 bar of judgment the poor and the starving sam- 
 ples of virtue which are current enough in a world 
 broken loose from its communion with God, and 
 to defy the inspection upon them of God's eter- 
 nal Son, and of the angels he brings along with 
 him to witness the righteousness of his decisions. 
 Sin has indeed been the ruin of our nature — but 
 this refusal of the Saviour of sinners lands them 
 in a perdition still deeper and more irrecover- 
 able. It is blindness to the enormity of sin. It 
 is equivalent to a formally announced senti- 
 
SERMON VI. 137 
 
 ment on your part that jour performances, sin- 
 ful as they are, and polluted as they are, are 
 good enough for heaven. It is just saying of 
 the offered Saviour, that you do not see the 
 use of him. It is a provoking contempt of 
 mercy; and causing the measure of ordinary 
 guilt to overflow, by heaping the additional 
 blasphemy upon it, of calling upon God to ho- 
 nour it by his rewards, and to look to it with 
 the complacency of his approbation. 
 
 We cannot, then, we cannot draw near unto 
 God, by a direct or independent approach to 
 him. And who, in these circumstances, is fit to 
 be the day's-man betwixt you.^^ There is not a 
 fellow-mortal from Adam downward, who has 
 not sins of his own to answer for. There is not 
 one of them who has not the sentence of guilt 
 inscribed upon his own forehead, and who is not 
 arrested by the same unsealed barrier which 
 keeps you at an inaccessible distance fromGod, 
 There is not one of them whose entrance into 
 the holiest of all would not inflict on it as great 
 a profanation, as if any of you were to present 
 yourselves before him, who dwelleth there, 
 without a Mediator. There lieth a great gulf 
 between God and the whole of this alienated 
 world : and after looking round amongst all the 
 men of all its generations, we may say, in the lan- 
 guage of the text, that there is not a day's-man 
 betwixt us who can lay his hand upon us both. 
 
 What we aim at, as the effect of all these ob- 
 servations, is, that you should feel your only se- 
 18 
 
138 SERMON VI. 
 
 curitj to be in the revealed and the offered 
 Mediator ; that you should seek to him as your 
 only effectual hiding-place ; and who alone, in 
 the whole range of universal being, is able to lay 
 his hand upon you, and shield you from the jus- 
 tice of the Almighty, and to lay his hand upon 
 God, and stay the fury of the avenger. By him 
 the deep atonement has been rendered. By him 
 the mystery has been accomplished, which an- 
 gels desired to look into. By him such a sacri- 
 fice for sin has been offered, as that, in the ac- 
 ceptance of the sinner, every attribute of the 
 Divinity is exalted ; and the throne of the Ma- 
 jesty in the heavens, though turned into a throne 
 of grace, is still upheld in all its firmness, and 
 in all its glory. Through the unchangeable 
 priesthood of Christ, the vilest of sinners may 
 draw ni«;h, and receive of that mercy which has 
 met with truth, and of that peace which is in 
 close alliance with righteousness ; and without 
 one perfection of the Godhead being surren- 
 dered by this act of forgiveness, all are made 
 to receive a higher and more wondrous mani- 
 festation ; for though he will by no means clear 
 the guilty, yet there is no place for vengeance* 
 when all their guilt is cleared away by the 
 blood of the everlasting covenant ; and though 
 he executeth justice upon the earth, yet he can 
 be just while the justiner of them who believe 
 in Jesus. 
 
 The work of our redemption is every where 
 spoken of as an achievement of strength — as 
 
SERMON VI. 139 
 
 done by the putting forth of mighty energies— 
 as the work of one who, travaihng in his own 
 unaided greatness, had to tread the wine-press 
 alone ; and who, when of the people there was 
 none to help him, did by his own arm bring 
 unto him salvation. To move aside the ob- 
 stacle which beset the path of acceptance; 
 to reinstate the guilty into favour with the of- 
 fended and unchangeable Lawgiver; to avert 
 from them the execution of that sentence to 
 which there were staked the truth and justice 
 of the Divinity ; to work out a pardon for the 
 disobedient, and at the same time to uphold in 
 all their strength the pillars of that throne 
 which they had insulted ; to intercept the de- 
 tied penalties of the law, and at the same time 
 to magnify it, and to make it honourable ; thus 
 to bend, as it were, the holy and everlasting 
 attributes of God, and in doing so, to pour 
 over them the lustre of a high and awful 
 vindication, — this was an enterprise of such 
 height, and depth, and breadth, and length, 
 as no created being could fulfil, and which 
 called forth the might and the counsel of him 
 who is the power of God, and the wisdom of 
 God. 
 
 When no man could redeem his neighbour 
 from the grave, — God himself found out a ran- 
 som. When not one of the beings whom he had 
 formed could offer an adequate expiation, — did 
 the Lord of hosts awaken the sword of ven- 
 geance against his fellow. When there was no 
 
140 SERMON Vi. 
 
 tnessenger among the angels who surrounded 
 his throne, that could both proclaim and pur- 
 chase peace for a guilty world, — did God mani- 
 fest in the flesh descend in shrouded majesty 
 amongst our earthly tabernacles, and pour out 
 his soul unto the death for us, and purchase 
 the church by his own blood, and bursting away 
 from the grave which could not hold him, as» 
 cend to the throne of his appointed mediator- 
 ship ; and now he, the first and the last, who 
 was dead and is alive, and maketh intercession 
 for transgressors, is able to save to the utter- 
 most all who come unto God through him; and 
 standing in the breach between a holy God and 
 the sinners who have offended him, does he 
 make reconciliation, and lay his hand upon 
 them both. 
 
 But it is not enough that the Mediator be 
 appointed by God, — he must be accepted by 
 man. And to incite our acceptance does he 
 hold forth every kind and constraining argu- 
 ment. He casts abroad, over the whole face of 
 the world, one wide and universal assurance of 
 welcome. " Whosoever cometh unto me shall 
 not be cast out." " Come unto me all ye who la- 
 bour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest.'^ " Where sin hath abounded, grace hath 
 much more abounded." " Whatsoever ye ask iri 
 my name ye shall receiva" The path of access 
 to Christ is open and free of every obstacle, 
 which kept fearful and guilty man at an im- 
 practicable distance from the jealous and un- 
 
SERMON VI. 141 
 
 pacitied Lawgiver. He hath put aside the ob- 
 stacle, and now stands in its place. Let us 
 only go in the way of the Gospel, and we shall 
 fiid nothing between us and God but the au- 
 thor and finisher of the Gospel, — who, on the 
 one hand, beckons to him the approach of 
 man, with every token of truth and of tender- 
 ness ; and, on the other hand, advocates our 
 cause with God, and fills his mouth with argu- 
 ments, and pleads that very atonement which 
 was devised in love by the Father, and with the 
 incense of which he was well pleased, and 
 claims, as the fruit of the travail of his soul, all 
 who put their trust in him ; and thus laying hi^ 
 hand upon God, turns him altogether from the 
 fierceness of his indignation. 
 
 But Jesus Christ is something more than the 
 agent of our justification,— he is the agent of 
 our sanctification also. Standing between us 
 and God, he receives from him of that Spirit 
 which is called the promise of the Father, and 
 he pours it forth in free and generous dispen- 
 sation on those who believe in him. Without 
 this spirit there may, in a few of the goodlier 
 specimens of our race, be within us the play 
 of what is kindly in constitutional feeling, and 
 without us the exhibition of what is seemly in 
 a constitutional virtue ; and man, thus standing 
 t)ver us in judgment, may pass his verdict of 
 approbation ; and all that is visible in our doings 
 may be pure as by the operation of snow water. 
 Bui the utter irreligiousness of our nature will 
 
142 SERiMON Yf. 
 
 remain as entire and as obstinate as ever. The 
 alienation of our desires from God will persist 
 with unsubdued vigour in our bosoms ; and sin^ 
 in the very essence of its elementary principle, 
 will still lord it over the inner man with all 
 the power of its original ascendency, — till the 
 deep, and the searching, and the pervading in- 
 fluence of the love of God be shed abroad in 
 our hearts by the Holy Ghost. This is the work 
 of the great Mediator. This is the might and 
 the mystery of that regeneration, v^ithout which 
 we shall never see the kingdom of God. This 
 is the office of Him to whom all power is com- 
 mitted, both in heaven and in earth,-- who, 
 reigning in heaven, and uniting its mercy with 
 its righteousness, causes them to flow upon 
 earth in one stream of celestial influence ; and 
 reigning on earth, and working mightily in the 
 hearts of its people, makes them meet for the 
 society of heaven, — thereby completing the 
 wonderful work of our redemption, by which, 
 on the one hand, he brings the eye of a holy 
 God to look approvingly on the sinner, and, 
 on the other hand, makes the sinner fit for the 
 fellowship, and altogether prepared for the en- 
 joyment of God. 
 
 Such are the great elements of a sinner's re- 
 ligion. But if you turn from the prescribed 
 use of them, the wrath of God abideth on you. 
 If you kiss not the Son while he is in the way, 
 you provoke his anger, and when once it begins 
 to burn, they only are blessed who have put 
 
SERMON VI. 143 
 
 their trust in him. If, on the fancied sufficien- 
 cy of a righteousness that is without godliness, 
 you neglect the great salvation, you will not 
 escape the severities of that day, when the 
 Being with whom you have to do shall en- 
 ter with you into judgment; and it is only by 
 fleeing to the Mediator, as you would from a 
 coming storm, that peace is made between you 
 and God, and that, sanctified by the faith which 
 is in Jesus, you are made to abound in such 
 fruits of righteousness, as shall be to praise and 
 glory at the last and the solemn reckoning. 
 
 Before we conclude, we shall just advert to 
 another sense, in which the Mediator between 
 God and man may be affirmed to have laid his 
 hand upon them both :—He fills up that mys- 
 terious interval which lies between every cor- 
 poreal being, and the God who is a spirit and 
 is invisible. 
 
 No man hath seen God at any time,— and 
 the power which is unseen is terrible. Fancy 
 trembles before its own picture, and supersti- 
 tion throws its darkest imagery over it. The 
 voice of the thunder is awful, but not so awful 
 as the conception of that angry Being who sits 
 in mysterious concealment, and gives it all its 
 energy. In these sketches of the imagination, 
 fear is sure to predominate. We gather an im- 
 pression of Nature's God, from those scenes 
 where Nature threatens, and looks dreadful. 
 We speak not of the theology of the schools, 
 and the empty parade of its demonstrations. 
 
144 SERMON VI, 
 
 We speak of the theology of actual feeling,— 
 that theology which is sure to derive its lessons 
 ir-om the quarter whence the human heart de- 
 rives its strongest sensations, — and we refer both 
 to your own feelings, and to the history of this 
 world's opinions, if God is more felt or more 
 present to yourimaginations in the peacefulness 
 of spring, or the loveliness of a summer land- 
 scape, than when winter with its mighty ele- 
 ments sw^eeps the forest of its leaves,^ — when the 
 rushing of the storm is heard upon our win- 
 dows, and man flees to cover himself from the 
 desolation that walketh over the surface of the 
 world. 
 
 If nature and her elements be dreadful, how 
 dreadful that mysterious and unseen Being, 
 who sits behind the elements he has formed, and 
 gives birth and movement to all things! It is 
 the mystery in which he is shrouded, — it is 
 that dark and unknown region of spirits, where 
 he reigns in glory, and stands revealed to the 
 immediate view of his worshippers, — it is the 
 inexplicable manner of his being so far removed 
 from that province of sense, within which the 
 understanding of man can expatiate, — it is its 
 total unlikeness to all that nature can furnish 
 to the eye of the body, or to the conception of 
 the mind which animates it, — it is all this 
 which throws the Being who formed us at a 
 distance so inaccessible. — which throws an im- 
 penetrable mantle over his way, and gives us 
 the idea of some dark and untrodden interval 
 
SERMON VL u 
 
 betwixt the glory of God, and all that is visible 
 and created. 
 
 Now, Jesus Christ has lifted up this myste- 
 rious veil, or rather he has entered within it. 
 He is now at the right hand of God ; and though 
 the brightness of his Father's glory, and the ex- 
 press image of his person, he appeared to us in 
 thepalpable characters of aman; and those high 
 
 attributes of truth, and justice, and mercy, which 
 could not be felt or understood, as they existed 
 in the abstract and invisible Deity, are brought 
 down to our conceptions in a manner the most 
 familiar and impressive, by having been made, 
 through Jesus Christ, to flo^v in utterance from 
 human lips, and to beam in expressive phy- 
 siognomy from a human countenance. 
 
 So long as I had nothing before me but the 
 unseen spirit of God, my mind wandered in 
 uncertainty, my busy fancy was free to expatiate, 
 and its images filled my heart with disquietude 
 and terror. But in the life, and person, and histo- 
 ry of Jesus Christ, the attributes of the Deity are 
 brought down to the observation of the senses ; 
 and I can no longer mistake them, when in the 
 Son, who is the express image of his Father, I 
 see them carried home to my understanding by 
 the evidence and expression of human organs, — 
 when I see the kindness of the Father, in the 
 tears which fell from his Son at the tomb of 
 Lazarus, — when I see his justice blended with 
 his mercy, in the exclamation, " O Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem," by Jesus Christ; uttered with a tone 
 
 19 
 
 m. 
 
146 SERMON Vf. 
 
 more tender than the sympathy of human bosom 
 ever prompted, while he bewailed the sentence 
 of its desolation,— and in the look of energy 
 and significance which he threw upon Peter, I 
 feel the judgment of God himself, flashing con- 
 viction upon my conscience, and calling me to 
 repent while his wrath is suspended, and he 
 still waiteth to be gracious. 
 
 And it was not a temporary character which 
 he assumed. The human kindness, and the 
 human expression which makes it intelligible 
 to us, remained with him till his latest hour. 
 They survived his resurrection, and he has 
 carried them along with him to the mysterious 
 place which he now occupies. How do I 
 know all this? I know^ it from his history; 
 I hear it in the parting words to his mother 
 from the cross ; I see it in his unaltered form 
 when he rose triumphant from the grave; I 
 perceive it in his tenderness for the scruples of 
 the unbeheving Thomas; and I am given to 
 understand, that as his body retained the im- 
 pression of his own sufferings, so his mind re- 
 tains a sympathy for ours, as warm, and gra- 
 cious, and endearing, as ever. We have a 
 Priest on high, who is touched with a fellow 
 feehng of our infirmities. My soul, unable to 
 support itself in its aerial flight among the 
 spirits of the invisible, now reposes on Christ, 
 who stands revealed to my conceptions in the 
 figure, the countenance, the heart, the sympa- 
 thies of a man. He has entered within that 
 
SERMON VI. 147 
 
 veil which hung over the glories of the Eternal ; 
 and the mysterious inaccessible throne of God 
 is divested of all its terrors, when I think that 
 a friend who bears the form of the species, and 
 knows its infirmities, is there to plead for me. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 THE FOLLV OF MEN MEASURING THEMSELVES BV 
 THEMSELVES. 
 
 2 Corinthians x. 12. 
 
 '* For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or com- 
 pare ourselves with some that commend themselves ; but 
 they, measuring themselves by themselves, and compar- 
 ing themselves among themselves, are not wise," 
 
 St. Paul addressed these words to the mem- 
 bers of a Christian congregation ; and were we 
 to confine their application to those people of 
 the present day, who, in circumstances, bear 
 the nearest resemblance to them, we would, in 
 the present discourse, have chiefly to do with 
 the more serious and declared professors of 
 the Gospel. Nor should we be long at a loss 
 for a very observable peculiarity amongst them, 
 against which to point the admonition of the 
 Apostle. For, in truth, there is a great dispo- 
 sition with the members of the religious world, 
 fo look away from the unalterable standard of 
 
SERMON VII. 149 
 
 God's will, and to form a standard of authority 
 out of the existing attainments of those whom 
 they conceive to be iii the faith. We know 
 nothing that has contributed more than this to 
 reduce the tone of practical Christianity. We 
 know not a more insidious security, than that 
 which steals over the mind of him who, when 
 he looks to another of eminent name for godli- 
 ness, or orthodoxy, and perceives in him a cer- 
 tain degree of conformity to the world, or a cer- 
 tain measure of infirmity of temper, or a certain 
 abandonment of himself to the natural enjoy- 
 ments of luxury, or of idle gossiping, or of com- 
 menting with malignant pleasure on the faults 
 and failings of the absent, thinks, that upon 
 such an example, it is safe for him to allow in 
 himself an equal extent of indulgence ; and to 
 go the same lengths of laxity or transgression; 
 and thus, instead of measuring himself by the 
 perfect law of the Almighty, and making con- 
 formity to it the c' ect of his strenuous aspir- 
 ings, — does he measure himself and compare 
 himself with his fellow-mortals, — and pitches 
 his ambition to no greater height than the ac- 
 cidental level which obtains amongst the mem- 
 bers of his own religious brotherhood, and 
 finds a quiet repose in the mediocrity of their 
 actual accomplishments, and of their current 
 and conventional observations. 
 
 There is much in this consideration to alarm 
 many of those who, within the pale of a select 
 and peculiar circle, look upon themselves as 
 
150 SERMON VU. 
 
 firmly seated in an enclosure of safety. They 
 may be recognised by the society around them, 
 as one of us ; and they may keep the even pace 
 of acquirement along with them ; and they may 
 wear all those marks of distinction which se- 
 parate them from the general and unprofessing 
 pubhc ; and, in respect of Church, and of sa- 
 crament, and of family observances, and of ex- 
 clusive preference for each other's conversa- 
 tion, and of meetings for prayer and the other 
 exercises of Christian fellowship, they may 
 stand most decidedly out from the world, and 
 most decidedly in with those of their own cast 
 and their own denomination ; — and yet, in fact, 
 there may be individuals, even of such a body 
 as this, who, instead of looking upwards to the 
 Being with whom they have to do, are looking 
 no farther than to the testimony and example 
 of those who are immediately around them; 
 who count it enough that they are highly es- 
 teemed among men ; who feel no earnestness, 
 and put forth no strength in the pursuit of ^ 
 lofty sanctification ; who are not living as in 
 the sight of God, and are not in the habit of 
 bringing their conduct into measurement with 
 the principles of that great day, when God's 
 righteousness shall be vindicated in the eyes 
 of all his creatures; who, satisfied, in short, 
 with the countenance of the people of their 
 own communion, come under the charge of my 
 text, that measuring themselves by themselves^ 
 and comparing themselves among themselves, 
 they are not wise. 
 
SERMON VII. 151 
 
 Now, though this habit of measuring ourselves 
 by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among 
 ourselves, be charged by the Apostle, in the 
 text, against the professors of a strict and pe- 
 culiar Christianity ; it is a habit so universally 
 exemplified in the world, and ministers such a 
 deep and fatal security to the men of all cha- 
 racters who hve in it, and establishes in their 
 hearts so firm a principle of resistance against 
 the humbling doctrines of the New Testament, 
 that we trust we shall be excused if we leave 
 out, for a time, the consideration of those who 
 are within the limits of the Church, and dwell 
 on the operation of this habit among those who 
 are without these limits; and going beyond 
 that territory of observation to'which the words 
 now read would appear to restrict us, we shall 
 attend to the effects of that principle in human 
 nature which are there adverted to, in as far as 
 it serves to fortify the human mind against an 
 entire reception of the truths and the overtures 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 It may be remarked, by way of illustration, 
 that the habit condemned in the text is an 
 abundant cause of that vanity which is founded 
 on a sense of our importance. If, instead 
 of measuring ourselves by our companions and 
 equals in society, we brought ourselves into 
 measurement with our superiors, it might go 
 far to humble and chastise our vanity. The 
 rustic conqueror on some arena of strength or 
 of dexterity, stands proudly elevated among 
 
152 SERMON VII. 
 
 his fellow-rustics who are around him. Place 
 him beside the returned warrior, who can tell of 
 the hazards, and the achievements, and the des- 
 perations of the great battle in which he had 
 shared the renown and the danger; and he will 
 stand convicted of the humility of his own per- 
 formances. The man who is most keen, and, at 
 the same time, most skilful in the busy politics 
 of his corporation, triumphs in the conscious- 
 ness of that sagacity by which he has baffled 
 and overpowered the devices of his many anta- 
 gonists. But take him to the high theatre of 
 Parliament, and bring him into fellowship with 
 the man who has there won the mighty game of 
 superiority, and he will feel abashed at the in- 
 significance of his own tamer and homelier pre- 
 tensions. The richest individual of the district 
 struts throughout his neighbourhood in all the 
 glories of a provincial eminence. Carry him to 
 the metropolis of the empire, and he hides his 
 diminished head under the brilliancy of rank 
 far loftier than his own, and equipage more 
 splendid than that by which he gathers from his 
 surrounding tributaries, the homage of a re- 
 spectful admiration. The principle of all this 
 vanity was seen by the discerning eye of the 
 Apostle. It is put down for our instruction in 
 the text before us. And if we, instead of look- 
 ing to our superiority above the level of our 
 immediate acquaintanceship, pointed an eye 
 of habitual observation to our inferiority be- 
 neath the level of those in society who were 
 
SERMON VIL 153 
 
 more dtgnified and more accomplished than 
 ourselves, — such a habit as this might shed a 
 graceful humility over our characters, and 
 save us from the pangs and the delusions of a 
 vanity which was not made for man. 
 
 And let it not be said of those, who, in the 
 more exalted walks of Hfe, can look to few or to 
 none above them, that they can derive no benefit 
 from the principle of my text, because they are 
 placed beyond the reach of its appHcation. It is 
 true of him who is on the very pinnacle of hu- 
 man society, that standing sublimely there, he 
 can cast a downward eye on all the ranks and 
 varieties of the world. But, though in the act 
 of looking beneath him to men, he may ga- 
 ther no salutary lesson of humility — the lesson 
 should come as forcibly upon him as upon any 
 of his fellow mortals, in the act of looking 
 above him to God. Instead of comparing him- 
 self with the men of this world, let him leave 
 the world and expatiate in thought over 
 the tracks of immensity,— let him survey the 
 mighty apparatus of worlds scattered in such 
 profusion over its distant regions ; let him bring 
 the whole field of the triumphs of his ambition 
 into measurement with the magnificence that is 
 above him, and around him, — above all, let him 
 rise through the ascending series of angels, and 
 principalities, and powers, to the throne of the 
 august Monarch on whom all is suspended,—*:!^ 
 and then will the lofty imagination of his 
 20 
 
IH SERMON VIL 
 
 heart be cast down, and all vanity di^ •within 
 him. 
 
 Now, if all this be obviously true of that va- 
 nity which is founded on a sense of our impor- 
 tance, might it not be as true of that compla- 
 cency which is founded on a sense of our 
 worth ? vShould it not lead us to suspect the 
 ground of this complacency, and to fear lest a 
 similar delusion be misleading us into a false 
 estimate of our own righteousness ? When we 
 feel a sufficiency in the act of measuring our- 
 selves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves 
 among ourselves, is it not the average virtue of 
 those around us that is the standard of measure- 
 ment ? Do we not at the time, form our estimate 
 of human worth upon the character of man as 
 it actually is, instead of forming it upon the 
 high standard of that pure and exalted law^ 
 which tells us what the character ought to be ? 
 Is it not thus that many are lulled into security, 
 because they are as good or better than their 
 neighbours ? This may do for earth, but the 
 question we want to press is, will it do for Hea- 
 ven ? It may carry us through life with a fair 
 and equal character in society, and even when 
 we come to die, it may gain us an epitaph 
 upon our tombstones. But after death cometh 
 the judgment; and in that awful day when 
 judgment is laid to the line and righteous- 
 !*ess to the plummet, every refuge of lies will 
 be swept away, and every hiding-place of se- 
 curity be laid open. 
 
SERMON VII. IT)/^ 
 
 Under the influence of this delusion, thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands are posting their 
 infatuated way to a ruined and undone eternity. 
 The good man of society lives on the applause 
 and cordiality of his neighbours. He compares 
 himself with his fellow-men ; and their testimony 
 to the graces of his amiable, and upright, and 
 honourable character, falls like the music of 
 paradise upon his eiirs. And it were also the 
 earnest of paradise, if these his flatterers and ad- 
 mirers in time were to be his judges in the day 
 of reckoning. But, alas ! they will only be his 
 fellow-prisoners at the bar. The eternal Son of 
 God Vill preside over the solemnities of that 
 day. He will take the judgment upon him- 
 self, and he will conduct it on his own lofty 
 standard of examination, and not on the maxims 
 or the habits of a world lying in wickedness, 
 O ye deluded men ! who carry your heads so 
 high, and look so safe and so satisfied amid the 
 smooth and equal measurements of society, -do 
 you ever think how you are to stand the admea- 
 surement of Christ and of his angels ? and think 
 you that the fleeting applause of mortals, sinful 
 as yourselves, will carry an authority over the 
 mind of your judge, or prescribe to him that so- 
 lemn award which is to fix you for <'ternity ? 
 
 In the prosecution of the following discourse. 
 let us first attempt to expose the folly of mea- 
 suring ourselves by ourselves, and comparing 
 ourselves amongst ourselves; and then poliit out 
 the wisdom opposite to this folly, which is re- 
 commended in the gospel. 
 
156 SERMON Vll 
 
 1. The foil J of measuring ourselves by our- 
 selves is a lesson which admits of many illus- 
 trations. The habit is so universal. It is so 
 strikingly exemplified, even among the most 
 acknowledged outcasts from all that is worthy, 
 and all that is respectable in general estimation. 
 -There is not a congregated mass of human be- 
 ings, associated in one common pursuit, or 
 brought together by one common accident, 
 among whom there is not established either 
 some tacit or proclaimed morality, to the obser^ 
 vance of which,orto the violation of which, there 
 is awarded admiration or disgrace, by the voice 
 of the society that is formetl by them. You 
 cannot bring two or more human beings to act 
 in concert without some conventional principle 
 of right and wrong arising out of it, which 
 either must be practically held in regard, or the 
 concert is dissipated. And yet it may be al- 
 together a concert of iniquity. It may be a 
 concert of villany and injustice against the 
 larger interests of human society. It may be a 
 banded conspiracy against the peace and the 
 property of the commonwealth ; and there may 
 not be a member belonging to it who does not 
 carry the stamp of outlawry upon his person, 
 and who is not liable, and rightlj liable, to the 
 penalties of an outraged government, against 
 which he is bidding, by the whole habit of his 
 life, a daily and systematic defiance. And jet 
 even among such a class of the species as this, 
 an enlightened observer of our nature will not 
 
SERMON VII. 157 
 
 fail to perceive a standard of morality, both re- 
 cognized and acted upon by all its individuals, 
 and in reference to which morality, there actu- 
 ally stirs in many a bosom amongst them a very 
 warm and enthusiastic feeling of obligation.-- 
 and some will you find, who, by their devoted 
 adherence to its maxims, earn among their com- 
 panions all the distinctions of honour and of vir- 
 tue,— and others who, by falling away from the 
 principles of the compact, become the victims 
 of a deep and general execration. And thus 
 may the very same thing be perceived with 
 them, that we see in the more general society 
 of mankind— -a scale of character, and, corres- 
 ponding to it, a scale of respectability, along 
 which the members of the most wicked and 
 worthless association upon earth may be ran- 
 ged according to the gradation of such virtues 
 as are there held in demand, and in reverence ; 
 and thus there Avill be a feeUng of complacency, 
 and a distribution of applause, and a conscious 
 superiority of moral and personal attainment, 
 and all this grounded on the habit of measuring 
 themselves by themselves, and comparing 
 themselves amongst themselves. 
 
 The first case of such an exhibition which 
 we offer to your notice, comes so aptly in for 
 the purpose of illustration, that homely and fa- 
 miliar as it is, we cannot resist the introduction 
 of it. We allude to the case of smugglers. 
 These men, in as far, at least, as it respects one 
 tie of allegiance, may be considered as com- 
 
158 SERMON Vil. 
 
 pletely broken loose from the government of 
 their country. They have formed themselves 
 into a plot against the interests of the pubHc re- 
 venue, and it maybe generally said of them, that 
 they have no feeling whatever of the criminality 
 of their undertaking. On this point there is ut- 
 terly wanting the sympathy of any common prin- 
 ciple between the administrators of the law and 
 the transgressors of the law, — and yet it w^ould 
 be altogether untrue to nature and to experi- 
 ence to say of the latter, that they are entire 
 strangers to the feeling of every moral obliga- 
 tion. They have a very strong sense of ob- 
 ligation to each other. There are virtues 
 amono"st them which serve to signalize certain 
 members, and vices amongst them which doom 
 to infamy certain other members of their own 
 association. In reference to the duties which 
 they owe to government, they may be dead to 
 every impression of them. But in reference 
 to those duties, on the punctual fulfilment of 
 w^hich depends the success, or even the conti- 
 nuance, of their system of operations, they may 
 be most keenly and sensitively alive. They 
 may speak of the informer who has abandoned 
 them, with all the intensity of moral hatred and 
 contempt ; and of the man, again, who never 
 once swerved from his fidelity; of the man, 
 who, with all the notable dexterity of his eva- 
 sions from the vigilance that was sent forth to 
 track and to discover him, was ever known to 
 be open as day amongst the members of his 
 
SERMON VII. 159 
 
 own brotherhood ; of the man, who, with the 
 unprincipledness of a most skih'ul and syste- 
 matic falsehood, in reference to the agents and 
 pursuers of the law, was the most trusty, and 
 the most incorruptible, in reference to his fel- 
 lows of the trade ; of the man who stands high- 
 est amongst them in all the virtues of pledged 
 and sworn companionship ; — why, of such a 
 man will these roving mountaineers speak in 
 terms of honest and h^rt-felt veneration : and 
 nothing more is necessary, in order to throw a 
 kind of chivalric splendour over him, than just 
 to be told, along with his inflexible devotedness 
 to the cause, of his heardy adventurers, and 
 his hair-breadth miracles of escape, and his 
 inexhaustible resources, and of the rapidity of 
 his ever-suiting and ever-shifting contrivances, 
 and of his noble and unquelled spirit of daring, 
 and of the art and activity by which he has 
 eluded his opponents, and of the unfaltering 
 courage by which he has resisted them. We 
 doubt not, that even in the history of this igno- 
 minious traffic, there do occur such deeds and 
 characters of unrecorded heroism; and still the 
 men who carry it on, measuring themselves by 
 themselves, may never think of the ignominy. 
 They will enjoy the praise they have one of 
 another, and care not for the distant blame 
 that is cast upon them by the public voice. 
 They will carry in their bosoms the swelling 
 consciousness of worth, and be regaled by the 
 home testimony of those who rvc about them ; 
 
160 SERMON VII. 
 
 and all this at the very time when, to the ge- 
 neral community, they offer a spectacle of odi- 
 ousness; all this at the very time, when the 
 power and the justice of an incensed govern* 
 ment are moving forth upon them. 
 
 But another case still more picturesque, and, 
 what is far better, still more subservient to the 
 establishment of the lesson of our text, may be 
 taken from another set of adventurers, hardier, 
 and more ferocious, and more unprincipled 
 than the former. We allude to the men of rapine; 
 and who, rather than that their schemes of ra- 
 pine should be frustrated, have so far overcome 
 all the scruples and all the sensibihties of na- 
 ture, that they have become men of blood. They 
 live as commoners upon the world; and at 
 large from those restraints, whether of feeling 
 or of principle, which hold in security together 
 ^ the vast majority of this world's families, they 
 are looked at by general society with a revolt- 
 ing sense of terror and of odiousness. And yet, 
 among these monsters of the cavern, and prac- 
 tised as they are in all the atrocities of the high- 
 way, will you find a virtue of their own, and a 
 high-toned morality of their own. Living as 
 they do, in a state of emancipation from the law 
 universal, still there is among them alawisoteri- 
 cal,in doing homage to which, the hearts of these 
 banditti actually glow with the movements of 
 honourable principle; and the path of their con- 
 duct is actually made to square with the confor- 
 mities of right and honourable practice. Ex- 
 
SERMON VIL 161 
 
 traordinary as you may think it, the very habit 
 of my text is in full operation among these very 
 men, who have wandered so far from all that is 
 deemed righteous in society; and disowning, 
 as they do, our standard of principle altogether, 
 they have a standard among themselves, on 
 which they can adjust a scale of moral estima^ 
 tion, and apply it in every exercise of judg- 
 ment on the character of each individual who 
 belongs to them. In reference to every devia- 
 tion that is made by them from the general stan- 
 dard of right, there is an entire obliteration of 
 all their sensibilities,~and this is not the ground 
 on which they ever think either of reproaching 
 themselves, or of casting any imputation of dis- 
 grace on their companions. But, in reference 
 to their own particular standard of right, they 
 are all awake to the enormity of every act of 
 transgression against it, — and thus it is, that 
 measuring themselves by themselves, and com- 
 paring themselves amongst themselves, there is 
 just with them as varied a distribution of praise 
 and of obloquy as is to be met with on the face 
 of any regular and well-ordered commonwealth. 
 And who, we would ask, is the man among all 
 these prowling outcasts ofnature, on whom the 
 law of his country would inflict the most un- 
 relenting vengeance? He who is most sig- 
 nalized by the moralities of his order,— he 
 who has gained by fidelity, and courage, and 
 disinterested honour, the chieftainship of con- 
 fidence and affection amongst them.-^he, the 
 
 21. 
 
162 SERMON VII. 
 
 foremost of all the desperadoes, on whose cha- 
 racter perhaps the romance of generosity and 
 truth is strangely blended with the stern bar- 
 barities of his calling, — and who, the most 
 admired among the members of his own bro- 
 therhood, is, at the same time, the surest to 
 bring down upon his person all the rigours and 
 all the severities of the judgment-seat. 
 
 Let us now follow with the eye of our ob- 
 servation, a number of these transgressors into 
 another scene. Let us go into the place 
 of their confinement ; and, in this receptacle of 
 many criminals, with all their varied hues of 
 guilt and of depravity, we shall perceive the 
 habit of my text in full and striking exem- 
 plification. The murderer stands lower in the 
 scale of character than the thief The first is 
 worse than the second — and you have only to 
 reverse the terms of the comparison, that you 
 may be enabled to say how the second is better 
 than the first Thus, even in this repository of 
 human worthlessness, we meet with gradations 
 of character ; with the worse and the better and 
 the best ; with an ascending and a descending 
 scale, which runs in continuity, from the one 
 who stands upon its pinnacle, to the one who 
 is the deepest and most determined in wicked- 
 ness amongst them. It is utter ignorance of 
 our nature to conceive that this moral gradation 
 is not fully and frequently in the minds of the 
 criminals themselves, — that there is not, even 
 here, the habit of each measuring himself with. 
 
SERMON Vrr. 163 
 
 his fellow-prisoners around him, and of some 
 soothed by the consciousness of a more un- 
 tainted character, and rejoicing over it with a 
 feehng of secret elevation. They, in truth, 
 know themselves to be the best of their kind, — 
 and this knowledge brings a complacency along 
 with it, — and, even in this mass of profligacy, 
 there swells and kindles the pride of superior 
 attainments. But there is at least one delusion, 
 from which one and all of them stand exempt- 
 ed. The very best of them, however much he 
 may be regaled by the inward sense of his 
 advantage over others, knows, that in reference 
 to the law, he is not on a footing of merit, but 
 on a footing of criminality, — knows, that though 
 he will be the most gently dealt with, and that 
 on him the lightest penalty will fall, yet still he 
 stands to his judge and to his country, in the re- 
 lation of a condemned malefactor — feels, how 
 preposterous it were, if, on the plea of being the 
 most innocent of the whole assemblage, he was to 
 claim, not merely exemption from punishment, 
 but the reward of some high and honourable 
 distinction at the hands of the magistrate. He 
 is fully aware of the gap that lies between him 
 and the administrators of justice, — is sensible, 
 that though he deserves to be beaten witli 
 fewer stripes than others, yet still, that, in the 
 eye of the law, he deserves to be beaten; and 
 that he stands at as hopeless a distance, as the 
 most depraved of his fellows, from a sentence 
 of complete justification. 
 
ii)i SERMON VII. . 
 
 Let us, last of all, go along with these male- 
 factors to the scene of then' banishment. Let us 
 view them as the members of a separated com- 
 munity : and we shall widely mistake it, if we 
 think, that in the settlement of New South 
 Wales, there is not the same shading of moral 
 Tariety, there is not the same gradation of cha- 
 racter, there is not the s^me scale of reputation, 
 there is not the same distribution of respect, 
 there is not the same pride of loftier principle, 
 and debasement of more shameful and abandon- 
 ed profligacy, there is not the same triumph of 
 conscious superiority on the one hand, and the 
 same crouching sense of unworthiness on the 
 other, which you find in the more decent, and 
 virtuous, and orderly society of Europe. Within 
 the limits of this colony there exists a tribunal 
 of public opinion, from which praise and po- 
 pularity, and reproach, are awarded in various 
 proportions among all the inhabitants. And 
 without the limits of this colony there exists 
 another tribunal of public opinion, by the 
 voice of which an unexcepted stigma of exclu- 
 sion and disgrace is cast upon every one of 
 them. Insomuch, that the same individual may, 
 by a nearer judgment, be extolled as the 
 best and the most distinguished of all who are 
 around him, — and, by a more distant judgment, 
 he may have all the ignominy of an outcast 
 laid upon his person and his character. He 
 may, at one and the same time, be regaled by 
 the applause of one society, and held in right- 
 
SERMON Vll. 16:) 
 
 iul execration by another society. In the for- 
 mer, he may have the deference of a positive 
 regard rendered to him for his virtues,— while, 
 from the litter he is justly exiled bj the hate- 
 ful contamination of his vices. And in him do 
 we behold the instructive picture of a man, 
 vrho,atthebar of his own neighbourhood, stands 
 the highest in moral estimation, — while, at a 
 higher bar, he has had a mark of foulest iocno- 
 miny stamped upon him. 
 
 We want not to shock the pride or the deli- 
 cacy of your feelings. But, on a question so high 
 as that of your eternity, we want to extricate 
 you from the power of every vain and bewilder- 
 ing delusion. We want to urge upon you the 
 lesson of Scripture, that this world differs from 
 a prison house, only in its being a more spa- 
 cious receptacle of sinners, — and that there is 
 not a wider distance, in point of habit and of 
 judgment, between a society of convicts, and 
 the general community of mankind, than there 
 is between the whole community of our species, 
 and the society of that paradise, from which, 
 under the apostacy of our fallen nature, we have 
 been doomed to live in dreary alienation. We 
 refuse not to the men of our world the posses- 
 sion of many high and honourable virtues : but 
 let us not forget, that amongst the marauders 
 of the highway, we hear too of inflexible faith, 
 and devoted friendship, and splendid genero- 
 sity. We deny not, that there exist amf)ng our 
 species, as much truth and as much honesty, 
 
166 SERMON VIL 
 
 as serve to keep society together : but a mea- 
 sure of the very same principle is necessary, 
 in order to perpetuate and to accomplish the 
 end of the most unrighteous combinations. W e 
 deny not, that there flourishes on the face of 
 our earth a moral diversity of hue and of cha^ 
 racter, and that there are the better and the 
 best who have signalized themselves above the 
 level of its general population : but so it is in 
 the malefactor's dungeon, and as there, so here, 
 may a positive sentence of condemnation be 
 the lot of the most exalted individual. We 
 deny not, that there are many in every neigh- 
 bourhood, to whose character, and whose worth, 
 the cordial tribute of admiration is awarded ; 
 but the very same thing may be witnessed 
 amongst the outcasts of every civilized ter- 
 ritory, — and what they are, in reference to the 
 country from which they have been exiled, we 
 may be, in reference to the whole of God's un- 
 fallen creation. In the sight of men we may 
 be highly esteemed, — and we may be an abomi- 
 nation in the sight of angels. We may receive 
 homage from our immediate neighbours for all 
 the virtues of our relationship with them, — 
 while our relationship with God may be utterly 
 dissolved, and its appropriate virtues may nei- 
 ther be recognized nor acted on. There may 
 emanate from our persons a certain beauteous- 
 ness of moral colouring on those who are around 
 us, — but when seen through the universal mo- 
 rality of God's extended and all-pervading 
 
SERMON VII. 167 
 
 government, we may look as hateful as the out- 
 casts of felony, — and living, as we do,' in a re- 
 bellious province, that has . broken loose from 
 the community of God's loyal and obedient 
 worshippers, we may, at one and the same time, 
 be surrounded by the cordialities of an ap- 
 proving fellowship, and be frowned upon by 
 the supreme judicatory of the universe. At 
 one and the same time, we may be regaled by 
 the incense of this world's praise, and be the 
 objects of Heaven's most righteous execration. 
 But is this the real place, it may be asked, 
 that our world occupies in the moral universe 
 of God ? The answer to this question may be 
 obtained either out of the historical informations 
 of Scripture, or out of a survey that may be 
 made of the actual character of man, and a com- 
 parison that may be instituted between this 
 character and the divine law. We can conceive 
 nothing more uniform and more decisive than 
 the testimony of the Bible, when it tells us 
 that however fair some may be in the eyes of 
 men, yet that all are guilty before God ; that 
 in his eyes none are righteous, no not one: that 
 he, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, 
 finds out iniquity in every one of us ; that there 
 is none who understandeth, and none who 
 seeketh after God; that however much we 
 may compare ourselves amongst ourselves, and 
 found a complacency upon the exercise, yet 
 that we have altogether gone out of the way; 
 that liQwever distinctly we may retain, even in 
 
168 SERMON VIL 
 
 the midst of this great moral rebellion, our re- 
 lative Superiorities ovet each other, there is a 
 wide and a general departure of the species 
 from God ; that on^ and all of us have deeply 
 revolted against him ; that the taint of a most 
 inveterate spiritual disease has overspread all 
 the individuals of all the families upon earth ; 
 insomuch, that the heart of man is deceitful 
 above all things and desperately wicked, and 
 the imaginations of his thoughts are only evil, 
 and that continually. 
 
 The fall of Adam is represented, in the Bi- 
 ble, as that terribly decisive event, on vrhich 
 took place this deep and fatal unhingement of 
 the moral constitution of our species. From 
 this period the malady has descended, and the 
 whole history of our world gives evidence to 
 its state of banishment from the joys and the 
 communications of paradise. Before the en- 
 trance of sin did God and man walk in sweet 
 companionship together, and saw each other 
 face to face in the security of a garden. A lit- 
 tle further down in the history, we meet with 
 another ol God's recorded manifestations. We 
 read of his descent in thunder upon mount Si- 
 nai. O'w^hat a change from the free and fear- 
 less intercourse of Eden ! God, though sur- 
 rouided by a people whom he had himself se- 
 lected, here sits, if we may use the expression, 
 on a throite of awful and distant ceremony; 
 and the lifting of his mio^hty voice scattered 
 dismay among the thousands of Israel. When 
 
SERMON VII. 165 
 
 he looked now on the children of men, he 
 looked at them with an altered countenance. 
 The dajs were, when they talked together in 
 the lovely scenes of paradise as one talketh with 
 a friend. But, on the top of Sinai, he wraps 
 himself in storms, and orders to set bounds about 
 the mount, lest the people should draw near, 
 and God should break forth upon them. 
 
 But we have an evidence to our state of ba- 
 nishment from God, which is nearer home. We 
 have it in our own hearts. The habitual atti- 
 tude of the inner man is not an attitude of sub- 
 ordination to God* The feeling of allegiance 
 to him is practically and almost constantly away 
 from us. All that can give value to our obedi- 
 ence, in the sight of an enlightened Spirit who 
 looks to motive, and sentiment, and principle, 
 has constitutionally no place, and no residence 
 in our characters. We are engrossed by other 
 anxieties than anxiety to do the will, and to pro- 
 mote the honour, of him who formed us. We 
 are animated by other affections altogether, 
 than love to him, whose right hand preserves 
 us continually. That Being by whom we are 
 so fearfully and wonderfully made; whose up- 
 holding presence it is that keeps us in life, and 
 in movement, and in the exercise of all our 
 faculties ; who has placed us on the theatre of 
 all our enjoyments, and claims over his own 
 creatures the ascendency of a most rightful 
 authority ; — that surely is the Being with whom 
 we have to do. ^nd yet, when we take ac' 
 
 22 
 
170 SERMOiN VIL 
 
 c^»unt of our thoughts and of our doings, how 
 little of God is there ! In the random play and 
 exhibition of such feelings as instinctively be- 
 long to us, we may gather around us the admi- 
 ration of our fellows : and so it is in a colony 
 of exiled criminals. But as much wanting 
 there, as is the homage of loyalty to the go- 
 vernment of their native land ; so much want- 
 ing here, is the homage of any deference or 
 inward regard, to the government of Heaven. 
 And yet this is the very principle of all that 
 obedience, which Heaven can look upon. If 
 it be true that no obedience is rewardable by 
 God, but that which has respect unto God, 
 then this must be the essential point on which 
 binges the difference between a rebel, and a 
 loyal subject to the supreme Lawgiver. The 
 requirement we live under is to do all things 
 to bis glory ; and this is the measure of prin- 
 ciple and of performance that will be set over 
 you : and tell us, ye men of civil and relative 
 propriety, who, by exemplifying in the eye of 
 vour fellows such virtue, as may be exemplified 
 by the outcasts of banishment, have shed around 
 your persons the tiny lustre of this world's mo- 
 ralities ; tell us, how you will be able to stand 
 such a severe and righteous application.^ The 
 measure by which we compare ourselves with 
 ourselves, is not the measure of the sanc- 
 tuary. When the judge comes to take account 
 of us, he will come fraught with the maxims 
 of a celestial jurisprudence, and his question 
 
SERMON VII. 171 
 
 will be, not, what have you done at the shrine 
 of popularity, — not, what have you done to sus- 
 tain a character amongst men, — not, what have 
 you done at the mere impulse of sensibilities 
 however amiable, or ofnative principles however 
 upright, and elevated, and manly, — but what 
 have you done unto me ? how much of God, 
 and of God's will, was there in the principle of 
 your doings ? This is the heavenly measure, 
 and it w ill set aside all your earthly measures 
 and comparisons. It will sweep away all these 
 refuges of lies The man whose accomplish- 
 ments of character, however lively, were all so- 
 cial, and worldly, and relative, will hang his head 
 in confusion when the utter wickedness of his 
 pretensions is thus laid open, — when the God 
 who gave him every breath, and endowed him 
 with every faculty, inquires after his share ot" 
 i-everence and acknowledgment, — when he 
 tells him from the judgment-seat, I was the 
 Being with whom you had to do, and yet in 
 the vast multiplicity of your doings, I was sel- 
 dom or never thought of, — when he convicts 
 him of habitual forgetfulness of God, and set- 
 ting aside all the paltry measurements which 
 men apply in their estimates of one another, he 
 brings the high standard of Heaven's law, and 
 Heaven's allegiance tabear upon them. 
 
 It must be quite palpable to any man who 
 has seen much of life, and still more if he has 
 travelled extensively, and witnessed the varied 
 complexions of morality that obtain in distant 
 
172 SERMON VII. 
 
 societies,-— it must be quite obvious to such a 
 man, how i^eadily the moral feeling, in each of 
 them, accommodates itself to the general state 
 of practice and observation, — that the practices 
 of one country, for which there is a most com-^ 
 placent toleration, would be shuddered at as 
 so many atrocities in another country, — that in 
 every given neighbourhood, the sense of right 
 and of wrong, becomes just as fine or as obtuse 
 as to square with its average purity, and its 
 average humanity, and its average uprightness, 
 — that what would revolt the public feeling of a 
 retired parish in Scotland a^^ gross licentious- 
 ness or outrageous cruelty, might attach no dis- 
 grace whatever to a residenter in some coloni- 
 al settlement, — that, nevertheless, in the more 
 corrupt and degraded of the two communities, 
 there is a scale of differences, a range of cha- 
 racter, along which are placed the comparative 
 stations of the disreputable, and the passable, 
 and the respectable, and the superexcellent ; 
 and yet it is a very possible thing, that if a 
 man in the last of these stations w ere to import 
 all his habits and all his profligacies into his 
 native land, superexcellent as he may be 
 abroad, at home he would be banished from 
 the general association of virtuous and well 
 ordered families. Now all we ask of you is, 
 to transfer this consideration to the matter be- 
 fore us, — to think how possible a thing it is, 
 that the moral principle of the world at large, 
 may have sunk to a peaceable and approving 
 
SERMON VII. 173 
 
 acquiescence in the existing practice of the 
 world at large, — that the security which is in- 
 spired by the habit of measuring ourselves by 
 ourselves, and comparing ourselves amongst 
 ourselves, may therefore be a delusion altoge- 
 ther, — that the very best member of socrety 
 upon earth, may be utterly unfit for the society 
 of heaven, that the morality which is current 
 here, may depend upon totally another set of 
 priniples from the morality which is held to be 
 indispensable there ;— and when we gather 
 these principles from the book of God's reve- 
 lation,— when we are told that the law of the 
 two great commandments is, to love the Lord 
 our God with all our strength, and heart, and 
 mind, and to bear the same love to our neigh- 
 bour that we do to ourselves,— the argument 
 advances from a conjecture to a certainty, that 
 every inhabitant of earth, when brought to the 
 bar of Heaven's judicature, is altogether want- 
 ing ; and that unless some great moral renova- 
 tion take effect upon him, he can never be ad- 
 mitted within the limits of the empire of right- 
 eousness. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 Christ the wisdom of god. 
 
 ' Christ the wisdom of God." 
 
 1 Corinthians i. 24._ 
 
 We cannot but remark of the Bible, how uni= 
 formly and how decisively it announces itself in 
 all its descriptions of the state and character of 
 man, — how, without offering to palliate the mat- 
 ter, it brings before us the totality of our aliena- 
 tion, — ho wit represents us to be altogether bro- 
 ken off from our allegiance to God, — and how 
 it fears not, in the face of those undoubted di- 
 versities of character which exist in the world, 
 to assert of the whole world, that it is guilty 
 before him. And if we would only seize on 
 what may be called the elementary principle of 
 guilt, — if we would only take it along with us, 
 that guilt, in reference to God, must consist in 
 the defection of our regard, and our reverence 
 from him, — if we would only open our eyes to 
 the undoubted fact, that there may be such an 
 utter defection, and yet there may be many an 
 amiable, and many a graceful exhibition, both 
 
SERMON VIII. 175 
 
 of feeling and of conduct, in reference to those 
 who are around us, — then should we recognize, 
 in the statements of the Bible, a vigorous, dis- 
 cerning, and intelligent view of human nature, — 
 an unfaltering announcement, of what that 
 nature essentially is, under all the plausibilities 
 which serve to disguise it, — and such an in- 
 sight, in fact, into the secrecies of our inner 
 man, as if carried home by that Spirit, whose 
 office it is to apply . the word with power into 
 the conscience, is enough, of itself, to stamp 
 upon this book, the evidence of the Divinity 
 which inspired it. 
 
 But it is easier far to put an end to the resis- 
 tance of the understanding, than to alarm the 
 fears, or to make the heart soft and tender, un- 
 der a sense of its guiltiness, or to prompt the 
 inquiry, — if all those securities, within the en- 
 trenchments of which I want to take my quiet 
 and complacent repose, are thus driven in, 
 where in the whole compass of nature or re- 
 velation can any effectual security be found ? 
 It may be easy to find our way amongst all the 
 complexional varieties of our nature, to its ra- 
 dical and pervading ungodliness ; and thus to 
 carry the acquiescence of the judgment in 
 some extended demonstration about the utter 
 sinfulness of the species. But it is not so easy 
 to point this demonstration towards the bosom 
 of any individual, — to gather it up, as it were, 
 from its state of diffusion over the whole field 
 of humanity, and send it, with all its energies 
 
J 76 SERMOJN VIll. 
 
 concentered to a single heart, in the form of a 
 ^harp, and humbhng, and terrifying convic- 
 tion, — to make it enter the conscience of some 
 one listener, like an arrow sticking fast, —or, 
 when the appalling picture of a whole world 
 lying in wickedness, is thus presented to the 
 understanding of a general audience, to make 
 each of that audience mourn apart over his 
 own wickedness ; just as when, on the day of 
 judgment, though all that is visible be shaking, 
 and dissolving, and giving way, each despair- 
 ing eye-witness shall mourn apart over the re- 
 collection of his own guilt, over the prospect 
 of his own rueful and undone eternity. And 
 yet, if this be not done, nothing is done. The 
 lesson of the text has come to you in word only, 
 and not in power. To look to the truth in its 
 generality, is one thing; to look to your own 
 separate concern in it, is another. What we 
 want is that each of you shall turn his eye 
 homewards; that each shall purify his own 
 heart from the influence of a delusion which 
 we pronounce to be ruinous ; that each shall 
 beware of leaning a satisfaction, or a triumph, 
 on the comparison of himself with corrupt and 
 exiled men, whom sin has degraded into out- 
 casts from the presence of God, and the joys 
 of paradise; that each of you shall look to the 
 measure of God's law, so that when the com- 
 mandment comes upon you, in the sense of its 
 exceediiior broadness, a sense of your sin, and 
 of your death in sin, may come along with it. 
 
SERMON Vm. 177 
 
 •• Without the commandment I was alive,*' says 
 the Apostle; "but when the commandment 
 came, sin revived, and I died." Be assured, 
 that if the utterance of such truth in your hear- 
 ing, impress no personal earnestness, and lead 
 to no personal measures, and be followed up 
 by no personal movements, then to you it is as 
 a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. 
 The preacher has been beating the air. That 
 great Agent, whose revealed office it is to con- 
 vince of sin, has refused to go along with him. 
 Another influence altogether, than that which 
 is salutary and saving, has been sent into your 
 bosom; and the glow of the truth universal 
 lias deafened or intercepted the application of 
 the truth personal, and of the truth particular. 
 
 This leads us to the second thing proposed 
 in our last discourse, under which we shall 
 attempt to explain the wisdom opposite to that 
 folly of measuring ourselves by ourselves, and 
 comparing ourselves among ourselves, which 
 we have already attempted to expose. 
 
 The first step is to give up all satisfaction 
 with yourselves, on the bare ground, that your 
 conduct comes up to the measure of human 
 character, and human reputation around you. 
 This consideration may be of importance to 
 your place in society; but, as to your place in 
 the favour of God, it is utterly insignificant. 
 The moral differences which obtain in a com- 
 munity of exiles, are all quite consistent with 
 the entire obliteration amongst them, o{ the 
 23 
 
178 SERxMON Vlll. 
 
 allegiance that is due to the government of 
 their native land. And the moral differences 
 which obtain in the world, may, in every way, 
 be as consistent with the fact, that one and all 
 of u^, in our state of nature, are alienated from 
 God by wicked works. And, in like manner, 
 as convicts may be all alive to a sense of their 
 reciprocal obligations, while dead in feeling 
 and in principle, to the supreme obligation un- 
 der which they lie to the sovereign, — so may 
 we, in reference to our fellowmen, have a sense 
 of rectitude, and honour, and compassion,while^ 
 in reference to God, we may labour under the 
 entire extinction of every moral sensibility, — 
 so that the virtues which signalize us, may, in 
 the language of some of our old divines, be nei- 
 ther more nor less than splendid sins. With 
 the possession of these virtues, we may not 
 merely be incurring every day the guilt of tres- 
 passing and sinning against our Maker in hea- 
 ven; but devoid, as we are, of all apprehension 
 of the enormity of this, we may strikingly real- 
 ize the assertion of the Bible, that weare dead 
 in trespasses and sins. And we pass our time 
 in all the tranquiUity of death. We say peace, 
 when there is no peace. Though in a state of 
 disruption from God, we live as securely and as 
 inconsiderately as if there were no question and 
 no controversy betwixt us. About this whole 
 matter, there is within us, a spirit of heaviness 
 and of deep slumber. We lie fast asleep on the 
 brink of an unprovided eternity, — and, if possi- 
 
SERMON VIll. 179 
 
 hie to awaken you, let us urge you to compare, 
 not your own conduct with that of acquain- 
 tances and neighbours, but to compare your 
 own finding of the ungodliness that is in your 
 heart with the doctrine of God's word about it — 
 to bring down the loftiness of your spirit to its 
 humbling declarations — to receive it as a faith- 
 ful saying, that man is lost by nature, and that 
 unless there be some mighty transition, in his 
 history, from a state of nature to a state of sal- 
 vation, the wrath of God abideth on him. 
 
 The next inquiry comes to be. What is this 
 transition ? Tell me the step I should take, and 
 I will take it. It is not enough, then, that you 
 exalt upon your own person the degree of those 
 virtues, by which you have obtained a credit and 
 a distinction among men. It is not enough, that 
 you throw a brighter and a lovlierhue over your 
 social accomplishments. It is not enough, that 
 you multiply the offerings of your charity, or 
 observe a more rigid compliance, than hereto- 
 fore with all the requisitions of justice. All 
 this you may do, and yet the great point, on 
 which your controversy with God essentially 
 .hinges, may not be so much as entered upon. 
 All this you may do, and yet obtain no nearer 
 approximation to Him whosittethon tlie throne, 
 than the outlaws of an offended government for 
 their fidelities to each other. To the eye of 
 man you may be fairer than before, and in civil 
 estimation be greatly more righteous than be*^ 
 fore, — and yet, with the unquelled spirit of im~ 
 
180 SERMON Vlli. 
 
 piety within you, and as habitual an indifference 
 as ever to all the subordinating claims of the 
 divine will over your heart and your conduct, 
 you may stand at as wide a distance from God 
 as before. And besides, how are we to dispose 
 of the whole guilt of your past iniquities ? 
 Whether is it the malefactor or the Lawgiver 
 who is to arbitrate this question ? God may re- 
 mit our sins ; but it is for him to proclaim this. 
 God may pass them over ; but it is for him to 
 issue the deed of amnesty. God may have 
 found out a way whereby, in consistency with 
 his own character, and with the stability of his 
 august government, he may take sinners into re- 
 conciliation ; but it is for him both to devise and 
 to publish this way ; — and we must just do what 
 convicts do ; when they obtain a mitigation or 
 a cancelment of the legal sentence under which 
 they lie, — we must passively accept of it, on the 
 terms of the deed, — we must look to the war- 
 rant as issued by the sovereign, and take the 
 boon or fulfil the conditions, just as it is there 
 presented to us. The question is between us 
 and God; and, in the adjustment of this ques- 
 tion, we must look singly to the expression of 
 his will, and feel that it is with him, and with 
 his authority, that we have exclusively to do. 
 In one word, we must wait his own revelation, 
 and learn from his own mouth how it is that 
 he would have us to come nigh unto him. 
 
 Let us go then to the record. " No man 
 cometh unto the Father but through the Son.'' 
 
SERMON Vm. 181 
 
 ^' There is no other name given under heaven, 
 but the name of Jesus, whereby we can be sav- 
 ed." " Without the shedding of blood there 
 is no remission of sin; and "God hath- set 
 forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith 
 in his blood." " He was once offered to bear 
 the sins of many,— and " became sin for us, 
 though he knew no sin, that we might be made 
 the righteousness of God in him." '• God is in 
 Christ reconciling, the world unto himself, and 
 not imputing unto them their trespasses." 
 i' Justified by faith, we have peace with God 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord ;"— " and we be- 
 come the children of God, through the faith 
 that is in Christ Jesus." We are " reconciled 
 to God by the death of his Son,"— "and by his 
 obedience are many made righteous,"— and 
 « where sin abounded, grace did much more 
 abound" These verses sound foolishness to 
 many ; but the cross of Christ is fooUshness to 
 those that perish. They appear to them invest- 
 ed with all the mysteriousness of a dark and hid- 
 den saying ; but if this Gospel be hid, it is hid 
 to them which are lost. They have eyes that 
 they cannot see the wondrous things contani- 
 ed in this book of God's communication ; but 
 they have minds whichbeHevenot,because they 
 are blinded by the god of this world, lest the 
 light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is 
 the image of God, should shine into them. 
 
 And here we cannot but insist on the utter 
 hopelessness of their circumstances, who hear 
 
182 SERMON VIII. 
 
 these overtures of reconciliation, but will not lis- 
 ten to them. Theirs is just the case of rebels 
 turning their back on a deed of grace and of 
 amnesty. We are quite confident in stating it 
 to be the stubborn experience of human nature, 
 that all who reject Christ, as he is offered in the 
 Gospel, persist in that radical ungodliness of 
 character on which the condemnation of our 
 world mainly and essentially rests. And as they 
 thus refuse to build their security on the founda- 
 tion of his merits, — what, we would ask, is the 
 other foundation on which they build it? If ever 
 they think seriously of the matter, or feel any 
 concern about a foundation on which they might 
 rest their confidence before God, they con- 
 ceive it to lie in such feelings, and such hu- 
 manities, and such honesties, as make them even 
 with the world, or as elevate them to a certain 
 degree abovethelevelof the world's population. 
 These are the materials of the foundation on 
 which they build. It is upon the possession 
 of virtues which in truth have not God for 
 their object, that they propose to support in 
 the presence of God the attitude of fearlessness 
 It is upon the testimony of fellow-rebels that 
 they brave the judgment of the Being who has 
 pronounced of them all, that they have deeply 
 revolted against him. And all this in the face 
 of God's high prerogative, to make and to pub- 
 lish his own overtures. All this in contempt 
 of that Mediator, whom he has appointed. All 
 this in resistance to the authentic deed of grace 
 
SERMON VIII. 183 
 
 and of forgiveness, which has been sent to our 
 world, and from which we gather the full as- 
 surance of God's willingness to be reconciled ; 
 but, at the same time, are expressly bound 
 down to that particular way in which he hath 
 chosen to dispense reconciliation. Who does 
 not see, that, in these circumstances, the guilt 
 of sin is fearfully aggravated on the part of 
 sinners, by their rejection of the Gospel ? Who 
 does not see, that thus to refuse the grant of 
 everlasting life in the terms of the grant, is 
 just to set an irretrievable seal upon their 
 own condemnation ? Who does not see, that, 
 in the act of declining to take the shelter 
 which is held out to them, they vainly imagine, 
 that God will let down his approbation, to such 
 performances as are utterly devoid of any spirit 
 of devout or dutiful allegiance to the Law- 
 giver ? This is, in fact, a dehberate posting of 
 themselves, and that more firmly and more 
 obstinately than ever, on the ground of their 
 rebellion, — and let us no longer wonder, then, 
 at the terms of that alternative of which we read 
 so often in the Bible. We there read, that if 
 we believe we shall be saved; but we also read, 
 that if we believe not, we shall be damned. We 
 are there told of the great salvation ; but how 
 shall we escape, if we neglect it.-^ We are there 
 invited to lay hold of the Gospel, as the savour 
 of life unto life : but, if w^e refuse the invita- 
 tion, it shall be to us the savour of death unto 
 death. The Gospel is there freely proclaimed 
 
184 SERMON VHI. 
 
 to us, for our acceptance ; but if we will not 
 obey the Gospel, we shall be punished with ever- 
 lasting destruction from the presence of the 
 Saviour's power. We are asked to kiss the Son 
 while he is in the way ; but if we do not, the al- 
 ternative is that he will be angry, and that his 
 wrath will burn against us. He is revealed to 
 us as a sure rock, on which, if we lean we shall 
 not be confounded : but if we shift our depen- 
 dence away from it, it will fall upon us and 
 grind us to powder. 
 
 And this alternative, so far from a matter 
 to be wondered at, appears resolvable into a 
 principle that might be easily comprehended. 
 God is the party sinned against: and if he 
 have the will to be reconciled, it is surely for 
 him to prescribe the way of it : and this he has 
 actually done in the revelation of the New 
 Testament : and whether he give a reason for 
 the way or not, certain it is, that in order to 
 give it accomplishment, he sent his eternal Son 
 into our world ; and this descent was accom- 
 panied with such circumstances of humiliation, 
 and conflict, and deep suffering, that heaven 
 looked on with astonishment, and earth was 
 bidden to rejoice, because of her great salva- 
 tion. It is enough for us to know that God 
 lavished on this plan the riches of a wisdom 
 that is unsearchable ; that, in the hearing of sin- 
 ful men, he has proclaimed its importance and 
 its efficacy ; that every Gospel messenger felt 
 himself charged, with tidings pregnant of joy, 
 
SERMON VIII. 185 
 
 and of mighty deliverance to the world. And 
 we ask you just to conceive, in these circum- 
 stances, what effect it should have on the mind 
 of the insulted Sovereign, if the world, instead 
 of responding, with grateful and delighted wel- 
 come, to the message, shall either nauseate its 
 terms, or, feeling in them no significancy, shall 
 turn with indifference away from it ? Are we at 
 all to wonder if the King, very wroth with the 
 men of such a world, shall at length send his ar- 
 mies to destroy it ? Do you think it likely that 
 the sameGod,who, after we had brokenhis com- 
 mandment, was willing to pass by our transgres- 
 sions, will be equally willing to pass them by, 
 after we have thus despised the proclamation 
 of his mercy; after his forbearance and his long- 
 suffering have been resisted ; and that scheme 
 of pardon, with the weight and the magnitude 
 of which angels appear to labour in amazement, 
 is received by the very men for whom it was 
 devised, as a thing of no estimation ? Surely, if 
 there had been justice in the simple and im- 
 mediate punishment of sin — this justice will be 
 discharged instill brighter manifestation on him, 
 who, in the face of such an embassy, holds out 
 in his determination to brave it. And, if it be a 
 righteous thing in God to avenge every viola- 
 tion of his law, how clearly and how irresistibly 
 righteous will it appear, when, on the great day 
 of his wrath, he taketh vengeance On those who 
 have added to the violation of his Kw, the re- 
 jection of the Gospel ! 
 
 24 
 
IH6 SERMOiN VIIL 
 
 But what is more than this — God hath con- 
 descended to make known to us a reason, for 
 that peculiar way of reconciliation, which he 
 hath set before us. It is that he might be just, 
 while the justiiier of those who beheve in Jesus, 
 In the dispensation of his mercy, he had to pro- 
 vide for the dignity of his throne. He had to 
 guard the stabihty of his truth, and of his right- 
 eousness. He had to pour the lustre of a high 
 and awful vindication, over the attributes of a 
 nature that is holy and unchangeable. He had 
 to make peace on earth and good will to men 
 meet and be at one, with glory to God in the 
 highest ; and for this purpose did the eternal 
 Son pour out his soul an offering for sin, and 
 by his obedience unto death, bring in an ever- 
 lasting righteousness. It'is through the channel 
 of this great expiation that the guilt of every 
 believer is washed away; and it is through the 
 imputed merits of him with whom the Fathef 
 was well pleased, that every believer is admit- 
 led to the rewards of a perfect obedience. Con- 
 ceive any man of this world to reject the offers 
 of reward and forgiveness in this way, and to 
 look for them m another. Conceive him to chal- 
 lenge the direct approbation of his Judge, on 
 the measure of his own worth, and his own 
 performances, and to put away from him that 
 righteousness of Christ, in the measure of 
 ^vhich there is no short-comiiig. Is he not, by 
 this attitude, holding out against God, and that 
 too on a question in which the justice of God 
 
SERMON VIIL 187 
 
 stands committed against him .'^ Is not the 
 poor sinner of a day eiitering into a fearful con- 
 troversy, with all the plans, and all the perfec- 
 tions of the Eternal ? Might not you conceive 
 every attribute of the Divinity, gathering into 
 a frown of deeper indignation against the da- 
 ringness of him, who thus demands the favour 
 of the Almighty on some plea of his own, and 
 resolutely declines it on that only plea, under 
 which the acceptance of the sinner can be in 
 harmony with the glories of God's holy and in- 
 violable character ? Surely, if we have fallen 
 short of the obedience of his law, and so short, 
 as to have renounced altogether that godliness 
 which imparts to obedience its spiritual and 
 substantial quality, — then do w^e aggravate the 
 enormity of our sin, by building our hope before 
 God on a foundation of sin ? To sin is to defy 
 God : but the very presumption that he will 
 smile complacency upon it, involves in it an- 
 other, and a still more deliberate attack upon 
 his government; and all its sanctions, and all its 
 severities, are let loose upon us in greater 
 force and abundance than before, if we either 
 rest upon our own virtue, or mix up this pollu^ 
 ted ingredient w ith the righteousness of Christ, 
 and refuse our single, entire, and undivided re- 
 liance on him, who alone has magnified the 
 law and made it honourable. 
 
 But such, if we may be allowed the expres- 
 sion, is the constitution of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, that, in proportion to the terror which it 
 
188 SERMON VIII 
 
 holds out to those who neglect it, is the securi- 
 ty that it provides to all, who flee for refuge to 
 the hope which is set before them. Paul un- 
 derstood this well, when, though he proiited 
 over many of his equals in his own nation, — 
 when though had he measured himself by them, 
 he might have gathered from the comparison a 
 feeling of proud superiority, — when though in 
 all that was counted righteous amongst his fel- 
 lows, he signalized himself in general estima- 
 tion, — yet he willingly renounced a dependence 
 upon all, that he might win Christ, and be 
 found in him, not having his own righteousness 
 which was of the law, but that righteousness 
 which is through the faith of Christ, even the 
 righteousness which is of God by faith. He felt 
 the force of the alternative, between the former 
 and the latter righteousness. He knew that the 
 one admitted of no measurement with the other; 
 and that whatever appearance of worth it had 
 in the eyes of men, when brought to their re- 
 lative and earthly standard, it was reduced to 
 nothing, and worse than nothing, when brought 
 to the standard of Heaven's holy and unaltera- 
 ble law. Jesus Christ has in our nature fulfil- 
 led this law; and it is in the righteousness 
 which he thus wrought, that we are invited to 
 stand before God. You do not then take in a 
 full impres'sion of Gospel security, if you only 
 believe that God is merciful, and has forgiven 
 you. You are called further to believe, that 
 God is righteous, and has justified you. You 
 
SERMON Vlir. 189 
 
 have a warrant to put on the righteousness of. 
 Christ as a robe and as a diadem, and to go to 
 the throne of grace with the petition of, Look 
 upon me in the face of him who hath fulfilled 
 all righteousness. You are furnished with such 
 a measure of righteousness as God can accept, 
 without letting down a single attribute which 
 belongs to him. The truth, and the justice, 
 and the holmes, which stands in such threat- 
 ening array against the sinner who is out of 
 Christ, now form into a shield and a hiding- 
 place around him. And while he who trusts 
 in the general mercy of God does so at the 
 expense of his whole character, he who trusts 
 in the mercy of God, which hath appeared 
 unto all men through the Saviour, offers in that 
 act of confidence an homage to every perfec- 
 tion of the Divinity, and has every perfection 
 of the Divinity upon his side. And thus it is, 
 that under the economy of redemption, we now 
 read, not merely of God being merciful, but of 
 God being just and faithful in forgiving our 
 sins, and in cleansing us from all our unright- 
 eousness. 
 
 Thus much for what may be called the judi- 
 cial ris;ht€ousn€SS, with which every believer is 
 invested by having the merits of Christ imput- 
 ed to him through faith. But this faith is 
 something more than a name. It takes up a 
 positive residence in the mind as a principle. 
 It has locality and operation there, and has 
 either no existence at all, or by its purifying 
 
190 SERMON VIU. 
 
 and reforming influence on the holder of it, does 
 it invest him also with a personal righteousness. 
 Now, to apply the conception of our text to 
 this personal righteousness, the first thing we 
 would say of it is, that it admits of no measure- 
 ments whatever with the social worth, or the 
 moral virtue, or any other of the personal ac- 
 complishments of character, which may belong 
 to those who have not the faith of the Gospel. 
 Faith accepts of the offered reconciliation, and 
 moves away from the alienated heart those sus- 
 picions, and aversions, and fears, which kept 
 man asunder from his God. We would not say, 
 then, of the personal righteousness of a believ- 
 er, that it consisted in a higher degree of that 
 virtue which may exist in a lower degree with 
 him who is not a believer. It consists in the 
 dawn, and the progress, and the perfecting of 
 a virtue, which, before he was a beHever, had 
 no existence whatever. It consists in the pos- 
 session of a character, of which, previous to his 
 acceptance of Christ, he had not the smallest 
 feature of reality; though to the external eye^ 
 there may have been some features of resem- 
 blance. The principle of Christian sanctifica- 
 tion, which, if we were to express it by another 
 name, we would call devotedness to God, is 
 no more to be found in the unbelieving world, 
 than the principle of an allegiance to their 
 rightful sovereign, is to be found among the out- 
 casts of banishment. It is not by any stretch- 
 mg out of the measuiii of your former virtues. 
 
SERMON VIII. 191 
 
 then, that you can attain this principle. There 
 needs to be originated within you a new virtue 
 altogether. It is not by the fostering of that 
 which is old, — it is by the creation of some- 
 thing new, that a man comes to have the per- 
 sonal righteousness of a disciple of the New 
 Testament. It is by giving existence to that 
 which formerly had no existence. And let us 
 no longer wonder, then, at the magnitude of 
 the terms which are employed in the Bible, to 
 denote the change, the personal change, which, 
 in point of character, and affection, and prin- 
 ciple, takes place on all who become meet for 
 the inheritance of the saints. It is there called 
 life from the dead, and a new birth, and a total 
 renovation, — all old things are said to be done 
 away, and all things to become new. With 
 many it is a w^onder how a change of such to- 
 tality and of such magnitude, should be ac- 
 counted as indispensable to the good and cre- 
 ditable man of society, as to the sunken profli- 
 gate. But if the one and the other are both 
 dead to a sense of their Lawgiver in heaven, — 
 then both need to be made alive unto him. 
 With both there must be the power and the re- 
 ality of a spiritual resurrection. And after this 
 great transition has been made, it will be found 
 that the virtues of the new state, and those of 
 the old state, cannot be brought to any common 
 standard of measurement at all. The one dis- 
 tances the other by a wide and impassable in- 
 terval There is all the difference in point of 
 
192 SERMON Vlll. 
 
 principle between a man of the world and a 
 new creature in Christ, that there is between 
 him who has the Spirit of God, and him who 
 has it not, — and all the difference in point of 
 performance, that there is between him who is 
 without Christ, and can therefore do nothings 
 and him who can do all things through Christ 
 strengthening him. There is a new principle 
 now, which formerly had no operation, even 
 that of godliness, — and a new influence now, 
 even that of the Holy Ghost, given to the pray- 
 ers of the believer ;--and under these provisions 
 will he attain a splendour and an energy of 
 character, with which, the better and the best 
 of this world can no more be brought into com- 
 parison, than earth will compare with heaven, 
 or the passions and the frivolities of time, with 
 the pure ambition and the lofty principles of 
 eternity. 
 
 And let it not be said, that the transforma- 
 tion of which we are now speaking, instead of 
 being thus entire and universal, consists only 
 with a good man of the world in the addition 
 of one virtue, to his previous stock of many 
 virtues. We admit that he had justice before, 
 and humanity before, and courteousness before, 
 and that the godliness which he had not before, 
 is only one virtue. But the station which it 
 asserts, among the other virtues, is a station 
 of supreme authority. It no sooner takes its 
 place among them, than it animates them all, 
 and subordinates them all. It sends forth 
 
SERMON VHl. 193 
 
 among them a new and pervading quality^ 
 which makes them essentially different from 
 what they were before. I may take daily ex- 
 ercise from a regard to my health, and by so 
 doing I may deserve the character of a man of 
 prudence ; or I may take daily exercise apart 
 from this consideration altogether, and because 
 it is the accidental wish of my parents that I 
 should do so : and thus may 1 deserve the cha- 
 racter of a man of filial piety. The external 
 habit is the same ; but under the one principle, 
 the moral character of this habit is totally and 
 essentially different from what it is under the 
 other principle. Yet the difference here^ is, 
 most assuredly, not greater than is the differ- 
 ence between the justice of a good man of 
 society, and the justice of a Christian disci- 
 ple. In the former case, it is done unto others, 
 or done unto himself In the latter case, it is 
 done unto God. The frame-work of his outer 
 doings is animated by another spirit altogether. 
 There is the breath of another life in it. The 
 inscription of Holiness to God stands engraven 
 on the action of the believer; and if this cha- 
 racter of holiness be utterly effaced from the 
 corresponding action of the good man of soci- 
 ety, then, surely, in character, in wortli, in spi- 
 ritual and intelligent estimation, there is the 
 utmost possible diversity between the two ac-- 
 tions. So that, should the most upright and 
 amiable man upon earth embrace the Gospel 
 faith, and become the subject of the Gospel 
 
 25 
 
194 SERMON VIII. 
 
 regeneration, — it is true of him, too, that all 
 did things are done away, and that all things 
 have become new. 
 
 Thus it is, that while none of the Christian 
 virtues can be made to come into measurement 
 with any of what may be called the constitu- 
 tional virtues, in respect of their principle, be- 
 cause the principle of the one set differs from 
 that of the other set, in kind as well as in de- 
 gree, yet there are certain corresponding vir- 
 tues in each of the classes, which might be 
 brought together into measurement, in respect 
 of visible and external performance. And it 
 is a high point of obligation with every disciple 
 of the faith, so to sustain his part in this com- 
 petition, as to show forth the honour of Chris- 
 tianity ; to prove by his own personal history in 
 the world, how much the morality of grace out^ 
 strips the morality of nature ; to evince the su- 
 perior lustre and steadiness of the one, when 
 compared with the frail, and fluctuating, and 
 desultory character of the other; and to make it 
 clear to the eye of experience, that it is only 
 under the peculiar government of the doctrine 
 of Christ, that all which is amiable in human 
 ivorth, becomes most lovely, and all which i& 
 justly held in human admiration, becomes most 
 great, and lofty, and venerable. The Bible 
 tells us to provide things honest in the sight of 
 men, as well as of God. It tells us, that upon 
 the person of every Christian, the features of 
 excellence should stand so legibly engraven. 
 
SERMON VIII. 195 
 
 that, as a living epistle, he might be seen and 
 read of all men. It is true, there is much in 
 the character of a genuine believer which the 
 world cannot see, and cannot sympathize with. 
 There is the rapture of faith, when in lively 
 exercise. There is the ecstacy of devotion. 
 There is a calm and settled serenity amid all 
 the vicissitudes of life. There is the habit of 
 having no confidence in the flesh, and of rejoic- 
 ing in the Lord Jesus. There is a holding fast 
 of our hope in the promises of the Gospel. 
 There is a cherishing of the Spirit of adoption. 
 There is the work of a believing fellowship 
 with the Father and with the Son. There is a 
 movement of affection towards the things w hich 
 are above. There is a building up of ourselves 
 on our most holy faith. There is a praying in 
 the Holy Ghost. There is a watching for his 
 influence with all perseverance. In a word, 
 there is all which the Christian knows to be 
 real, and which the world hates, and denounces 
 as visionary, in the secret, but sublime and 
 substantial processes of experimental religion. 
 But, on the other hand, there is also much in 
 the doings of an altogether Christian, of that 
 palpable virtue which forces itself upon general 
 observation ; and he is most grievously untrue 
 to his Master's cause, if he do not, on this 
 ground, so outrun the world, as to force from 
 the men of it, an approving testimony. The 
 eye of the world cannot enter within the spirit- 
 oal recesses of his heart ; but let him ever re- 
 
196 SERMON VIIL 
 
 member that it is fastened, and that too, with 
 keen and scrutinizing jealousy, on the path of 
 his visible history. It will offer no homage to 
 the mere sanctity of his complexion; nor, un- 
 less there be shed over it, the expression of 
 what is mild in domestic, or honourable in pub- 
 lic virtue, will it ever look upon him in any 
 other light, than as an object of the most un- 
 mingled disgust. And therefore it is, that he 
 must enter on the field of ostensible accomplish- 
 ment, and there bear away the palm of superi- 
 ority, and be the most eminent of his fellows 
 in all those recognized virtues, that can bless 
 or embelhsh the condition of society ; the most 
 untainted in honour, and the most disinterested 
 injustice, and the most alert in beneficence, and 
 the most unwearied in all these graces, under 
 every discouragement and every provocation. 
 We have now only time to say, that we shall 
 not regret the length of this discourse, or even 
 the recurrence of some of its arguments, if any 
 hearer amongst you, not in the faith, be 
 led by it, to withdraw his confidence from 
 the mere accomplishments of nature, — and if 
 any behever amongst you be led by it, not 
 to despise these accomplishments, but to put 
 them on, and to animate them all with the 
 spirit of religiousness, — if any hearer amongst 
 you, beginning to perceive his own nothing- 
 ness in the sight of God, be prompted to in- 
 quire, Wherewithal shall I appear before him.'^ 
 and not rest from the inquiry, till he flee from 
 
SERMON Vin. 197 
 
 his hiding-place, to that everlasting righteous- 
 ness which the Saviour hath brought in ; and 
 if any believer amongst you, rightly dividing 
 the word of truth, shall act on the principle, 
 that though nothing but the doctrine of Christ 
 crucified, can avail him for acceptance with 
 God, yet he is bound to adorn this doctrine in 
 all things. And knowing that one may ac- 
 quiesce in the whole of such a demonstration, 
 without carrying it personally home, we leave 
 off with the single remark, that every convic- 
 tion not prosecuted, every movement of con- 
 science not followed up, every ray of light or 
 of truth wDt turned to individual application, 
 will aggravate the reckoning of the great day, 
 — and, in that proportion to the degree of ur- 
 gency which has been brought to bear upon 
 you, and been resisted, will be the weight and 
 the justness of your final condemnation. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE TO GOD 
 
 JUDE 21. 
 
 ' Keep 3 ourselves in the love of God.' ' 
 
 It is not easy to give the definition of a term^ 
 which is currently and immediately understood 
 without one. But, should not this ready un- 
 derstanding of the term supersede the defini- 
 tion of it, what can we tell of love in the way 
 of explanation, but by a substitution of terms^ 
 not more simple and more intelligible than it- 
 self.^ Can this affection of the soul be made 
 clearer to you by words, than it is already clear 
 to you by your own consciousness ? Are we to 
 attempt the elucidation of a term, which, with- 
 out any feeJ'as^ of darkness or of mystery, you 
 make familiar :ise of every dny ? You say with 
 the utmost promptitude, and you have just as 
 ready an apprehension of the meaning of what 
 you say, that I love this man, and bear a still 
 higher regard to another, but have my chief 
 and my best liking directed to a third. We 
 
SERMON rX. 199 
 
 will not attempt to go in search of a more lu- 
 minous or expressive term, for this simple affec- 
 tion, than the one that is commonly employed. 
 But it is a different thing, to throw light upon 
 the workings of this affection, — to point your 
 attention to the objects on which it rests, and 
 finds a complacent gratification, — and to assign 
 the circumstances, which are either favourable 
 or unfavourable to its excitement. All this 
 may call forth an exercise of discrimination. 
 But instead of dwelling any more on the signi- 
 ficancy of the term love, which is the term of 
 my text, let us forthwith take it unto use, and 
 be confident that, in itself, it carries no ambi- 
 guity along with it. 
 
 The term love, indeed, admits of a real 
 and intelligent application to inanimate objects. 
 There is a beauty in sights, and a beauty in 
 sounds, and I may bear a positive love to the 
 mute and unconscious individuals in which this 
 beauty hath taken up its residence. 1 may love 
 a flower, or a murmuring stream, or a sunny 
 bank, or a humble cottage peeping forth from 
 its concealment, — or, in fine, a whole landscape 
 may teem with such varied graces, that I may 
 say of it, this is the scene I most love to be- 
 hold, this is the prospect over which my eye 
 and my imagination most fondly expatiate. 
 
 The term love admits of an equally real, and 
 equally intelligent application, to our fellow- 
 men. They, too, are the frequent and familiar 
 objects of this affection, and they often are so^ 
 
t 
 
 200 SERMON IX. 
 
 because they possess certain accomplishments 
 of person and of character, by which it is ex- 
 cited. I love the man whose every glance 
 speaks an effusive cordiality towards those 
 who are around him. I love the man whose 
 heart and whose hand are ever open to the re- 
 presentations of distress. I love the man who 
 possesses such a softness of nature, that the im- 
 ploring look of a brother in want, or of a bro- 
 ther in pain, disarms him of all his selfishness, 
 and draws him out to some large and willing 
 surrender of generosity. I love the man who 
 carries on his aspect, not merely the expres- 
 sion of worth, but of worth maintained in the 
 exercise of all its graces, under every variety 
 of temptation and discoaragement; who, in the 
 midst of calumny, can act the warm and en- 
 lightened philanthropist ; who, when beset 
 with many provocations, can weather them all 
 in calm and settled endurance; who can be 
 kind even to the unthankful and the evil ; and 
 who, if he possess the awful virtues of truth 
 and of justice, only heightens our attachment 
 the more, that he possesses goodness, and ten- 
 derness, and benignity along with them. 
 
 Now, we would have vou to advert to one 
 capital distinction, betw een the former and the 
 latter class of objects. The inanimate reflect 
 no love upon us back again. They do not sin- 
 gle out any one of their admirers, and, by an 
 act of preference, either minister to his selfish 
 appetite for esteem, or minister to his selfish 
 
SERMON IX. 201 
 
 appetite for enjoyment, by affording to him a 
 larger share than to others, of their presence, 
 and of all the delights which their presence 
 inspires. They remain motionless in their 
 places, without will and without sensibility; 
 and the homage they receivt?, is from the dis- 
 interested affection, which men bear to their 
 loveliness. They are loved, and that purely, 
 because they are lovely. There is no mixture 
 of selfishness in the affection that is offered to 
 them. They do not put on a sweeter smile to 
 one man than to another ; but all the features 
 of that beauty in which they are arrayed, stand 
 inflexibly the same to every beholder ; and he, 
 without any conscious mingling whatever of 
 self-love, in the emotion with which he gazes 
 at the charms of some external scenery, is ac- 
 tuated by a love towards it, which rests and 
 which terminates on. the objects that he is em- 
 ployed in contemplating. 
 
 But this is not always the case, when our 
 
 fellow-men are the objects of this affection. I 
 
 should love cordiality, and benevolence, and 
 
 compassion for their own sakes ; but let your 
 
 own experience tell, how far more sweetly and 
 
 more intensely the love is felt, when this cor- 
 
 diahty is turned, in one stream of kindliness, 
 
 towards myself; when the eye of friendship 
 
 has singled out me, and looks at me with a 
 
 peculiar graciousness ; w hen the man of ien-^ 
 
 derness has pointed his way to the abode of 
 
 my suffering family, and there shed in secrecy 
 
 26 
 
Wl SERMON IX 
 
 over them his liberalities, and his tears ; when 
 he has forgiven me the debt that I was unable 
 to discharge ; and when, oppressed as I am, by 
 the consciousness of having injured or reviled 
 him, he has nobly forgotten or overlooked the 
 whole provocation, and persists in a regard 
 that knows no abatement, and in a well-doing 
 that is never weary. 
 
 There is an element, then, in the love I bear 
 to a fellow-man, which does not exist in the 
 love I bear to an inanimate object ; and which 
 may serve, perhaps, to darken the character 
 of the affection that I feel towards the former. 
 We most readily concede it, that the love of 
 another, on account of the virtues which adorn 
 him, changes its moral character altogether, if 
 it be a love to him, solely on account of the 
 benefit which I derive from the exercise of 
 these virtues. 1 should love compassion on 
 its own account, as well as on the account that 
 it is I who have been the object of it. I should 
 love justice on its own account, as well as on 
 the account that my grievances have been re- 
 dressed by the dispensation of it. On looking 
 at goodness, 1 should feel an affection resting 
 on this object, and finding there its full and its 
 terminating gratification; and that, though I 
 had never stood in the way of any one of its 
 beneficent operations. 
 
 How is it, then, that the special direction of 
 a moral virtue in another, towards the object 
 of my personal benefit, operates in enhancing 
 
SERMON IX. 203 
 
 both the sensation which it imparts to my 
 heart, and the estimate which I form of it ? 
 What is the pecuUar quality communicated to 
 my admiration of another's friendship, and an- 
 other's goodness, by the circumstance of my- 
 self, being the individual towards whom that 
 friendship is cherished, and in favour of whom 
 that goodness puts itself forth into active exer- 
 tion? At the sight of a benevolent man, there 
 arises in my bosom an instantaneous homage 
 of regard and of reverence ;— but should that 
 homage take a pointed direction towards my- 
 self;— -should it realize its fruits on the comfort 
 and security of my own person,— should it be 
 employed in gladdening my home, and spread- 
 ing enjoyment over my family, oppressed with 
 want and pining in sickness, there is, you will 
 allow, by these circumstances, a heightening 
 of the love and the admiration that 1 formerly 
 rendered to him. And, we should like to know 
 what is the precise character of the addition 
 that has thus been given to my regard for the 
 virtue of benevolence. We should Uke to know, 
 if it be altogether a pure and a praiseworthy ac- 
 cession that has thus come upon the sentiment, 
 with which I now look at my benefactor,— or, 
 if, by contracting any taint of selfishness, it 
 has lost the high rank that formerly belonged 
 to it, as a disinterested affection, towards the 
 goodness which beautifies and adorns his cha- 
 racter. 
 
 There is one way, however, in which this 
 
204 SERMON IX, 
 
 special direction of a moral virtue towards my 
 particular interest, may increase my affection 
 for it, and without changing the moral charac- 
 ter of my affection. It gives me a nearer view 
 of the virtue in question. It is true, that the 
 virtue may just be as lovely when exercised in 
 behalf of my neighbour, as when exercised in 
 behalf of myself. But, in the former case, I am 
 not an eye-witness to the display and the evo- 
 lution of its loveliness. 1 am a limited being, 
 who cannot take in so full and so distinct an 
 impression of the character of what is distant, 
 as of the character of what is immediately be- 
 side me. It is true, that all the circumstances 
 maybe reported. But you know very well, that a 
 much livelier representation is obtained of any 
 object, by the seeing of it, than by the hearing 
 of it. To be told of kindness, does not bring 
 this attribute of character so forcibly, or so 
 clearly home to my observation, as to receive 
 a visit from kindness, and to take it by the hand, 
 and to see its benignant mien, and to hear its 
 gentle and complacent voice, and to witness 
 the solicitude of its inquiries, and to behold its 
 tender and honest anxiety for my interest, and 
 to share daily and weekly in the liberalities 
 which it has bestowed upon me. When all this 
 goes on around my own person, and within the 
 limits of my own dwelling-place, it is very true 
 that self is gratified, and that this circumstance 
 may give rise to sensations, which are altoge- 
 ther distinct from the love I bear to moral 
 
SERMON IX. 20^ 
 
 Worth, or to moral excellence. But this does 
 not hinder, that, along with these sensations, a 
 disinterested love for the moral virtue of which 
 I have been the object, may, at the same time, 
 have its room, and its residence within my bo~ 
 som. I may love goodness more than ever, 
 on its own own account, since it has taken its 
 specific way to my habitation, and that, just 
 because I have obtained a nearer acquaint- 
 ance with it. I may love it better, because I 
 know it better. My affection for it may have 
 become more intense, and more devoted than 
 before, because its beauty is now more fully un- 
 folded to the eye of my observation than be- 
 fore. And thus, when we admit that the good- 
 ness of which I am the object, originates with- 
 in me certain feelings different in kind from 
 that which is excited by goodness in gene- 
 ral, yet it may heighten the degree of this lat- 
 ter feeling also. It may kindle or augment the 
 love I bear to moral virtue in itself; or, in other 
 words, it may enhance my affection for worth, 
 without any change whatever in the moral cha- 
 racter of that affection. 
 
 Now, before we proceed to consider those 
 peculiar emotions which are excited within me, 
 by being the individual, in whose favour certain 
 virtues are exercised, and which emotions are, 
 all of them, different in kind from the affection 
 that I bear for these virtues, — let us further ob- 
 serve, that the term love, when applied to a 
 sentient being, considered as the object of it, 
 
206 SERlMON IX. 
 
 may denote an affection, different in the princi- 
 ple of its excitement, from any that we have 
 been yet considering. My love to another 
 may lie in the liking I have for the moral quali- 
 ties which belong to him ; and this, by way of 
 distinctness, may be called the love of moral 
 esteem or approbation. Or, my love to another, 
 may consist in the desire I have for his happi- 
 ness ; and this may be called the love of kind- 
 ness. These two are often allied to each other 
 in fact, but there is a real difference in their 
 nature. The love of kindness which I bear to 
 my infant child, may have to reference to its 
 moral qualities whatever. This love finds its 
 terminating gratification, in obtaining for the 
 object of it, exemption from pain, or in minis- 
 tering to its enjoyments. It is very true, that 
 the sight of what is odious or revolting in the 
 character of another, tends, in point of fact, to 
 dissipate all the love of kindness I may have 
 ever borne to him. But it does not always 
 do so, and one instance of this proves a real 
 distinction, in point of nature, between the love 
 of kindness, and the love of moral estee^n. And 
 the highest and most affecting instance which can 
 be given of this distinction, is in the love where- 
 with God hath loved the world; is in that kind- 
 ness towards us, through Christ Jesus, which he 
 hath made known to men in the Gospel; is in that 
 longing regard to his fallen creatures, whereby 
 he was not willing that any should perish, but 
 rather that all should live. There was the love 
 
SERMON fX. 207 
 
 of kindness standing out, in marked and sepa- 
 rate display, from the love of moral esteem ; 
 for, alas ! in the degraded race of mankind, 
 there was not one quality which could call 
 forth such an affection, in the breast of the 
 Godhead. It was, when we were hateful to 
 him in character, that, in person and in inte- 
 rest, we were the objects of his most unbound- 
 ed tenderness. It was, when we were enemies 
 by wicked works, that God looked on with pi- 
 ty, and stretched forth, to his guilty children, 
 the arms of offered reconciliation. It was, 
 when we had wandered far, in the paths of 
 worthlessness and alienation, that he devised 
 a message of love, and sent his Son into our 
 world, to seek and to save us. 
 
 And this, by the way, may serve to illustrate 
 the kind of love which we are required to bear 
 to our enemies. We are required to lovje them, 
 in the same way in which God loves his ene- 
 mies. A conscientious man will feel oppressed 
 by the difficulty of such a precept, if he try to 
 put it into obedience, by loving those who have 
 offended, with the same feeling of complacen- 
 cy with which he loves those ^ who have be- 
 friended him. But the truth is, that the love 
 of moral esteem often enters, as a principal 
 ingredient, into the love of complacency ; and 
 we are not required, by our imitation of the 
 Godhead, to entertain any such affection, for 
 the depraved and the worthless. It is enough, 
 that we cherish towards them i?i our hearts the 
 
208 SERMON IX. 
 
 love of kindness ; and this will be felt a far 
 more practicable achievement, than to force 
 up the love of complacency into a bosom, re- 
 volted by the aspect of treachery, or disho- 
 nesty, or unprincipled selfishness. There is 
 no possible motive to excite the latter affec- 
 tion. There may be a thousand to excite the 
 former : and we have only to look to the un- 
 happy man in all his prospects, and in all his 
 relations; we have only to pity his delusions, 
 and to view him as the hapless victim of a sad 
 and ruinous infatuation ; we have only to carry 
 our eye onwards to the agonies of that death, 
 which will shortly lay hold of him, and to com- 
 pute the horrors of that eternity, which if not 
 recovered from the error of his way, he is about 
 to enter ; we have only, in a word, to put forth 
 an exercise of faith in certain near and im- 
 pending realities, the evidence of which is al- 
 together resistless, in order to summon up such 
 motives, and such considerations, as may cause 
 the compassion of our nature to predominate 
 over the resentment of our nature ; and as will 
 assure to a believer the victory over such ur- 
 gencies of his constitution, as to the unrenewed 
 heart, are utterly unconquerable. 
 ' But, to resume our argument, let it be ob- 
 served, that the kindness of God is one of the 
 loveliest, and most estimable of the attributes, 
 which belong to him. It is a bright feature in 
 that assemblage of excellencies, which enter 
 into the character of the Godhead; and, as* 
 
SERMON IX. 209 
 
 such, independently altogether of this kindness 
 being exercised upon me, I should offer to it 
 the homage of my moral approbation. But, 
 should I be the special and the signalized object 
 of his kindness, there is another sentiment to- 
 ward God, beside the love of moral esteem, 
 that ought to be formed within me by that cir- 
 cumstance, and which, in the business of rea- 
 soning, should be kept apart from it. There is 
 the love of gratitude. These often go together, 
 and may be felt simultaneously, towards the one 
 being we are employed in contemplating. But 
 they are just as distinct, each from the other, 
 as is the love of moral esteem from the love of 
 kindness. We trust that we have already con- 
 vinced you, that God feels towards us, his infe- 
 riors, the love of kindness, when he cannot, 
 from the nature of the object, feel for us the 
 slightest degree of the love of moral esteem. 
 In the same manner, may we feel, we are not 
 saying towards God, but towards an earthly 
 benefactor, the love of gratitude, when, from 
 the nature of the object we are employed in 
 contemplating, there is much to impair within 
 as the love of moral esteem, or to extinguish 
 it altogether. Is it not most natural to say of 
 the man, who has been personally benevolent 
 to myself, and who has, at the same time, dis- 
 .^raced himself by his vices, that, bad as he is, 
 he has been at all times remarkably kind to me, 
 and felt many a movement of friendship to- 
 vvards my person, and done many a deed of im- 
 
 27 
 
210 SERMON IX. 
 
 portant service to my family, and that I, at 
 least, owe him a gratitude for all this, — that 1, 
 at least, should be longer than others, of dis- 
 missing from my bosom the last remainder of 
 cordiality towards him, — that, if infamy and 
 poverty have followed, in the career of his 
 wickedness, and he have become an outcast 
 from the attentions of other men, it is not for 
 me to spurn him instantly from my door, — or, 
 in the face of my particular recollections, to 
 look unpitying and unmoved, at the wretched- 
 ness into which he has fallen. 
 
 It is the more necessary, to distinguish the 
 love of gratitude from the love of moral esteem, 
 that each of these affections may be excited 
 simultaneously within me, by one act or by one 
 exhibition of himself, on the part of the Deity. 
 Let me be made to understand, that God has 
 passed by my transgression, and generously ad- 
 mitted me into the privileges and the rewards 
 of obedience, — I see in this, a tenderness, and 
 a mercy, and a love, for his creatures, which, if 
 blended at the same time with all that is high 
 and honourable in the more august attributes of 
 his nature, have the effect of presenting him to 
 my mind, and of drawing out my heart in moral 
 regard to him, as a most amiable and estima- 
 ble object of contemplation. But, besides this, 
 there is a peculiar love of gratitude, excited by 
 the consideration that I am the object of this 
 benignity, — that I am one of the creatures to 
 whom he has directed this peculiar regard^ — 
 
SERMON IX. 211 
 
 that he has singled out me, and conceived a gra- 
 cious purpose towards me, and in the execution 
 of this purpose is lavishing upon my person, the 
 blessings of a father's care, and afather's tender- 
 ness. Both the love of moral esteem, and the 
 love of gratitude, may thus be in contempora- 
 neous operation within me; and it will be seen 
 to accomplish a practical, as well as a metaphy- 
 sical purpose, to keep the one apart from the 
 other, in the view of the mind, when love to- 
 wards God is the topic of speculation, which 
 engages it. 
 
 But, further, let it be understood, that the 
 love of gratitude differs from the love of moral 
 esteem, not merely in the cause which imme- 
 diately originates it, but also in the object, in 
 which it finds its rest and its gratification. It 
 is the kindness of another being to myself, 
 which originates wdthin me the love of gratitude 
 towards him ; and it is the view of what is mo- 
 rally estimable in this being, that originates 
 within me all the love of moral esteem, that I 
 entertain for him. There is a real distinction 
 of cause between these two affections, and there 
 is also between them a real distinction of object. 
 The love of moral esteem finds its complacent 
 gratification, in the act ol dwelling contempla- 
 tively on that Being, by whom it is excited; just 
 as a tasteful enthusiast inhales deligfitfrom the 
 act of gazing, on the chq^rms of some external 
 scenery. The pleasure he receiv^es, emanntes 
 directly upon bis mind, from the forms of beauty 
 
212 SERMON IX. 
 
 and of loveliness, which are around him. And 
 if, instead of a taste for the beauties of nature, 
 there exists within him, a taste for the beauties 
 of holiness, then will he love the Being, who 
 presents to the eye of his contemplation the 
 fullest assemblage of them, and his taste will 
 find it& complacent gratification in dwelling up 
 on him, whether as an object of thought, or a& 
 an object of perception. " One thing have I de- 
 sired^" says the Psalmist, " 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 
 ip bis temple." Now, the love of gratitude is 
 distinct from this in it& object. It is excited 
 by the love of kindness; and the feeling which 
 is thus excited, is just a feeling of kindness back 
 again. It i& kindness begetting kindness. The 
 language of this affection is, " What sImB I ren- 
 der unto the Lord for all his benefits ?" He 
 has done what is pleasing and gratifying to me. 
 What shall I do to please, and to gratify him ? 
 The love of gratitude seeks for answers to thi^ 
 question, and finds its delight in acting^ upon 
 them, and whether the answer be, — this is the 
 will of God even your sanctification, — or, with 
 the sacrifices of liberality God is well pleased, — 
 or, obedience to parents is well pleasing in his- 
 sight, — these all point out so many lines of con- 
 duct, to which the impulse of the love of gra* 
 titude would carry us, and attest this to be 
 the love of God,— that ye keep his command- 
 ments. 
 
SERMON IX. 213 
 
 And, indeed, when the same Being com- 
 bines, in his own person, that which ought to 
 excite the love of moral esteem, with that 
 which ought to excite the love of gratitude, — 
 the two ingredients, enter with a mingled but 
 harmonious concurrence, into the exercise 
 of one compound affection. It is true, that 
 the more appropriate offering of the former 
 is the offering of praise, — just as when one 
 looks to the beauties of nature, he breaks out 
 into a rapturous acknowledgment of them ; and 
 so it may be, when one looks to the venerable, 
 and the lovely in the character of God. The 
 more appropriate offering of the latter, is the of- 
 fering of thanksgiving, or of such services as are 
 fitted to please, and to gratify a benefactor. But 
 still it may be observed, how each of these sim- 
 ple affections tends to express itself, by the very 
 act which more characteristically marks the 
 workings of the other ; or, how the more appro- 
 priate offering of the first of them, may be prompt- 
 ed under the impulse, and movement of the se- 
 cond of them, and conversely. For, if I love 
 God because of his perfections, what principle 
 can more powerfully or more directly lead to 
 the imitation of them ? — which is the very ser- 
 vice that he requires, and the very offering that 
 he is most pleased with. And, if I love God 
 because of his goodness to me, what is more 
 fitted to prompt my every exertion, in the way 
 of spreading the honours of his character and 
 of his name amons; mv fellows, — and, for this 
 
w 
 
 214 SERMON IX. 
 
 purpose, to magnify in their hearing the glories 
 and the attributes of his nature ? It is thus that 
 the voice of praise and the voice of gratitude 
 may enter into one song of adoration; and 
 that whilst the Psalmist, at one time, gives 
 thanks to God at the remembrance of his holi- 
 ness, he, at another, pours forth praise at the 
 remembrance of his mercies. 
 
 To have the love of gratitude towards God, 
 it is essential that we know and believe his love 
 of kindness towards us. To have the love of 
 moral esteem towards him, it is essential that 
 the loveliness of his character be in the eye of 
 the mind ; or, in other words, that the mind 
 keep itself in steady and believing contempla- 
 tion of the excellencies which belong to him. 
 The view that we have of God, is just as much 
 in the order of precedency to the affection that 
 we entertain for him, as any two successive 
 steps can be, in any of the processes of our 
 mental constitution. To obtain the introduc- 
 tion of love into the heart, there must, as a 
 preparatory circumstance, be the introduction 
 of knowledge into the understanding ; or, as 
 we can never be said to know what we do not 
 believe — ere we have love, we must have faith; 
 and, accordingly, in the passage from which 
 our text is extracted, do we perceive the one 
 pointed to, as the instrument for the produc- 
 tion of the other. " Keep yourselves in the 
 love of God, building yourselves up on your 
 most holy faith." 
 
SERMON IX. 2in 
 
 And here, it ought to be remarked, that a 
 man may experience a mental process, and yet 
 have no taste or no understanding for the ex- 
 planation of it. The simple truths of the Gos- 
 pel, may enter with acceptance into the mind 
 of a peasant, and there work all the proper in- 
 fluences on his heart and character, which the 
 Bible ascribes to them : and yet he may be ut- 
 terly incapable of tracing that series of inward 
 movements,by which he is carried onwards from 
 a belief in the truth, to all those moral and affec- 
 tionate regards, which mark a genuine disciple 
 of the truth. He may be the actual subject of 
 these movements, though altogether unable 
 to follow or to analyze them. This is not 
 peculiar to the judgments, or the feelings of 
 Christianity. In the matters of ordinary life, a 
 man may judge sagaciously, and feel correctly 
 while ardently; — and experience, in right and 
 natural order, the play of his various faculties, 
 without having it at all in his power, either to 
 frame or to follow a true theory of his facul- 
 ties. It is well, that the simple preaching of 
 the Gospel has its right practical operation on 
 men, who make no attempt whatever, to com- 
 prehend the metaphysics of the operation. 
 But, if ever metaphysics be employed to dark- 
 en the freeness of the Gospel offer, or to de- 
 throne faith from the supremacy which be- 
 longs to it, or to forbid the approaches of 
 those whom God has not forbidden ; then must 
 it be met upon its own ground, and the real 
 
216 SERMON IX. 
 
 character of our beneficent religion be assert- 
 ed, amid the attempts of those who have in 
 any way obscured or injured it by their ilius- 
 Orations, 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 ORATITUDE, NOT A SORPID AFFECTION, 
 
 1 John iv. 19. 
 ^' We love him, because he first loved us." 
 
 Some theologians have exacted from an in- 
 quirer, at the very outset of his conversion, that 
 he should carry in his heart what they call the 
 disinterested love of God. They have set him 
 on the most painful efforts to acquire this affec- 
 tion, — and that too, before he was in circum- 
 stances in which it was* at all possible to enter- 
 tain it. They have led him to view with sus- 
 picion the love of gratitude, as having in it a 
 taint of selfishness. They are for having him 
 to love God, and that on the single ground that 
 he is lovely, without any reference to his own 
 comfort, or even to his own safety. Strange 
 demand which they make on a sentient being, 
 that even amidst the fears and the images of 
 destruction, he should find room in his heart for 
 the love of complacency ! and equally strange 
 demand to make on a sinful being, that ere he 
 admit such a sense of reconciliation into his bo- 
 som, as will instantly call forth a grateful regard 
 to him who has conferred it, he must view God 
 with a disinterested affection ; that from the 
 deep and helpless abyss of his depravity, he 
 jTftust find, unaided, his ascending way to the 
 28 
 
218 SERMON X. 
 
 purest and the sublimest emotion of moral na- 
 ture; that ere he is delivered from fear he 
 must love, even though it be said of love, that 
 it casteth out fear; and that ere he is placed 
 on the vantage ground of the peace of the Gos- 
 pel, he must reaHze on his character, one of 
 the most exalted of its perfections. 
 
 The effect of all this on many an anxious 
 seeker after rest, has been most discouraging. 
 With the stigma that has been affixed to the 
 love of gratitude, they have been positively ap- 
 prehensive of the inroads of this affection, and 
 have studiously averted the eye of their con- 
 templation from the objects which are fitted to 
 inspire it. In other words, they have hesitated 
 to entertain the free offers of salvation, and 
 misinterpreted all the tokens of an embassy, 
 which has proclaimed peace on earth and good 
 will to men. They think that all which they 
 can possibly gather, in the way of affection? 
 from such a contemplation, is the love of gra- 
 titude ; and that gratitude is selfishness ; and 
 that selfishness is not a gracious affection ; and 
 that ere they be surely and soundly converted, 
 the love tliey bear to God must be of a total- 
 ly disinterested character ; and thus through 
 another medium than that of a free and gratu- 
 itous dispensation of kindness, do they strive, 
 by a misunderstood gospel, or without the 
 gospel altogether, to reach a peace and a pre- 
 paration which we fear, in their way of it, ie 
 to sinners utterly unattainable. 
 
SERMON X. 219 
 
 In the progress of this discourse let us en- 
 deavour, in the first place, to rescue the love of 
 gratitude from the imputations which have 
 been preferred against it, — and, secondly, to 
 assign to the love of kindness manifested to the 
 world in the gospel, and to the faith by which 
 that love is made to arise in the heart, the place 
 that the pre-eminence which belong to them. 
 
 I. The proper object of the love of grati- 
 tude, is the being who has exercised towards 
 me the love of kindness : and this is more cor- 
 rect than to say, that the proper object of this 
 affection, is the being who has conferred bene- 
 fits upon me. I can conceive another to load 
 me with benefactions, and, at the same time, to 
 evince that kindness towards me was not the 
 principle which impelled him. It may be done 
 reluctantly at the bidding of another, or it may 
 be done to serve some interested purpose, or 
 it may be done to parade his generosity before 
 the eye of the public. If it be not done from 
 a real principle of kindness to myself, I may 
 take his gifts, and I may find enjoyment in the 
 use of them; but I feel no gratitude towards 
 the dispenser of them. Unless I see his kind- 
 ness in them, I will not be grateful. It is true 
 that, in point of fact, gratitude often springs 
 from the rendering of a benefit ; but, lest we 
 should confound things which are different, let 
 it be well observed, that this is only when the 
 benefit serves as the indication of a kind pur- 
 pose, or of a kind affection, on the part of him 
 
220 SERMON t. 
 
 who hath granted it. And this may be proved^ 
 not merely by showing, that there may be no 
 gratitude where there is a benefit, but also by 
 showings that there may be gratitude where 
 there is no material benefit whatever. Just let 
 the naked principle of kindness discover itself^ 
 and though it have neither the power, nor the 
 opportunity of coming forth with the dispensa- 
 tion of any service, it is striking to observe, 
 how upon the bare existence of this affection 
 being known, it is met by a grateful feeling, on 
 the part of him to whom it is directed; and 
 what mighty augmentations may be given, in 
 this way, to the stock of enjoyment, and that^ 
 hj the mere reciprocation of kindness beget- 
 ting kindness* For, to send the expression of 
 this kindness into another's bosom, it is not al- 
 ways necessary to do it on the vehicle of a po- 
 sitive donation. It may be conveyed by a look 
 of benevolence ; and thus it is, that by the 
 mere feeling of cordiality, a tide of happiness 
 may be made to circulate throughout all the 
 individuals of an assembled company. Or it 
 may be done by a very slight and passieg at- 
 tention, and thus it is, that the cheap services 
 of courteousness, may spread such a charm 
 over the face of a neighbourhood. Or it may 
 be done by the very poorest member of human 
 society ; and thus it is, that the ready and sin- 
 cere homage of attachment from such a man, 
 may beam a truer felicity upon me, and call 
 forth a livelier gratitude to him who has con- 
 
SERMON X. 221 
 
 ferred it, than some splendid act of patronage 
 on the part of a superior. Or it may be done 
 by a Christian visitor in some of the humblest 
 of our city lanes, who, without one penny to 
 bestow on the children of want, may spread 
 among them the simple conviction of her good 
 will, and call down upon her person the voice 
 of thankfulness and of blessing from all their 
 habitations. And thus it is, that by good will 
 creating good will, a pure and gladdening influ- 
 ence will at length go abroad over the face of 
 our world, and mankind will be made to know 
 the might and the mystery of that tie, which 
 is to bind them together into one family, and 
 they will rejoice in the power of that secret 
 charm which so heightens and so multiplies the 
 pleasure of all the members of it; and, when 
 transported from earth to heaven, they will 
 still feel, that while it is to the benefits which 
 God hath conferred that they owe the posses- 
 sion and all the privileges of existence ; it is to 
 a sense of the love which prompted these be- 
 nefits, that they will owe the ecstatic charm of 
 their immortality. It is the beaming kindness 
 of God upon them, that will put their souls 
 into the liveliest transports of gratitude and 
 joy; and it is the reciprocation of this kind- 
 ness on the part of those, who, while they have 
 fellowship with the Father, and with the Son, 
 have fellowship also with one another, that 
 will cause the joy of heaven to be full. 
 
 The distinction which we are now adverting 
 
222 SERMON X. 
 
 to, is something more than a mere shadowy re- 
 finement of speculation. It may be realized on 
 the most trodden and ordinary path of human 
 experience, and is, in fact, one of the most fa- 
 mihar exhibitions of genuine and unsophisticat- 
 ed nature, in those ranks of society where re- 
 finement is unknown. Let one man go over 
 any given district of the city, fully fraught 
 with the materiel of benevolence ; let him be 
 the agent of some munificent subscription, and 
 with nothing in his heart but just such affec- 
 tions, and such jealousies, and such thoughtful 
 anxieties, about a right and equitable division, 
 as belong to the general spirit of his office ; 
 let him leave some substantial deposit with 
 each of the families; and then compute, if he 
 can, the quantity of gratitude which he carries 
 away with him. It were a most unkind reflec- 
 tion on the lower orders, and not more unkind 
 than untrue, to deny that there will be the 
 mingling of some gratitude, along with the 
 clamour, and the envy, and the discontent, 
 which are ever sure to follow in the train of 
 such a ministration. It is not to discredit the 
 poor, that we introduce our present observa- 
 tion ; but to bring out, if possible, into broad 
 and luminous exhibition, one of the finest sen- 
 sibilities which adorns them. It is to let you 
 know the high cast of character of which they 
 are capable ; and how the glow of pleasure 
 which arises in their bosoms, when the eye of 
 simple affection beams upon their persons, oi' 
 
SERMON X. 223 
 
 upon their habitations, may not have one single 
 taint of sordidness to debase it. And to prove 
 this, just let another man go over the same dis- 
 trict, and in the train of the former visitation ; 
 conceive him unbacked by any public institu- 
 tion, to have nothing in his hand that might 
 not be absorbed by the needs of a single fami- 
 ly, but, that utterly destitute, as he is, of the 
 materieU he has a heart charged and overflow- 
 ing with the whole morale of benevolence. Just 
 let him go forth among the people, without one 
 other recommendation than an honest and un- 
 dissembled good will to them; and let this 
 good will manifest its existence, in any one of 
 the thousand ways, by which it may be autheur 
 ticated ; and whether it be by the cordiahty 
 of his manners, or by his sympathy with their 
 griefs, or by the nameless attentions and offices 
 of civility, or by the higher aim of that kind- 
 ness which points to the welfare of their im- 
 mortality, and evinces its reality, by its repay 
 and unwearied services among the young, or 
 the sick, or the dying; just let them be satis- 
 fied of the one fact, that he is their friend, 
 and that all their joys and all their sorrows are 
 his own; he may be struggling with hardships 
 and necessities, as the poorest of them all ; but 
 poor as they are, they know what is in^M^ heart, 
 and well do they know how to value it ; and 
 from the voice of welcome, which meets him 
 in the very humblest of tlieir tenements ; and 
 from the smile of that heartfelt enjoyment. 
 
224 StRMON X. 
 
 which his presence is ever sure to awaken, an3 
 from the influence of graciousness which he 
 carries along with him into every house, and 
 by which he hghts up an honest emotion of 
 thankfulness in the bosom of every family, may 
 we gather the existence of a power, which 
 worth alone, and without the accompaniment 
 of wealth, can bestow ; a power to sweeten 
 and subdue, and tranquillize, which no money 
 can purchase, which no patronage can create 
 It will be readily acknowledged by all, that 
 the most precious object in the management of 
 a town, is to establish the reign of happiness 
 and contentment among those who live in it. 
 And it is interesting to mark the operations of 
 those, who, without adverting to the principle 
 that I now insist upon, think, that all is to be 
 achieved, by the beggarly elements which en- 
 ter into the arithmetic of ordinary business; 
 who rear their goodly scheme upon the basis of 
 sums and computations ; and think that by an 
 overwhelming discharge of the materiel of be- 
 nevolence, they will reach an accompHshment 
 which the morale of benevolence alone is equal 
 to. We are sure that it is not to mortify our 
 men of grave, and official, and calculating ex- 
 perience, that we tell them, how, with all their 
 strengtljiand all their sagacity, they have only 
 given their money for that which is not meat* 
 and their labour for that which satisfieth not. 
 it is to illustrate a principle of our common 
 nature, so obvious, that to be recognized, it 
 
SERMOlN X. 225 
 
 needs only to be spoken of. And it were well, 
 if in so doing their thoughts could be led to the 
 instrumentality of this prineiple,as the only way 
 in which they can redeem the failures of thfcir 
 by-gone experience ; if they could be convinc- 
 ed, that the agents of a zealous and affectionate 
 Christianity can alone do what all the inlluence 
 of municipal weight and municipal wisdom 
 cannot do ; if they could be taught what the 
 ministrations are, by which a pure and a re- 
 sponding gratitude, may be made to circulate 
 throughout all our dwelling-places; if, in a 
 word, while they profess to serve the poor, 
 they could be led to respect the poor, to do 
 homage to that fineness of moral temperament 
 which belongs to them, and which hitherto 
 seems to have escaped, altogether, the eye of 
 civil or political superintendence; and they 
 may rest assured, that let them give as much 
 in the shape of munificence as they will, if they 
 add not the love to the liberahty of the Gospel, 
 they will never soften one feature of unkindli- 
 ness, or chase away one exasperated feehng, 
 from the hearts of a neglected population. 
 
 But, beside the degree of purity in which 
 this principle may exist among the most desti- 
 tute of our species, it is also of importance to 
 remark the degree^ of strength, in which it ac- 
 tually exists among the most depraved of our 
 species. And, on this subject, do we think 
 that the venerable Howard has bequeathed to 
 us a most striking and valuable observation. 
 
226 SERMON X. 
 
 You know the history of this man's enterprises ^ 
 how his doings, and his observations, were 
 among the veriest outcasts of humanity, — how 
 he descended into prison houses, and there 
 made himself famihar with all that could most 
 revolt or terrify, in the exhibition of our fallen 
 nature; how, for this purpose, he made the 
 tour of Europe ; but instead of walking in the 
 footsteps of other travellers, he toiled his painful 
 and persevering way through these receptacles 
 of worthlessness ; — and, sound experimentalist 
 as he was, did he treasure up the phenomena 
 of our nature, throughout all the stages of mis- 
 fortune, or depravity. We may well conceive 
 the scenes of moral desolation that would often 
 meet his eye ; and that, as he looked to the 
 hard, and dauntless, and defying aspect of cri- 
 minality before him, he would sicken in despair 
 of ever finding one remnant of a purer and het- 
 ter principle, by w^hich -he might lay hold of 
 these unhappy men, and convert them into the 
 willing and the consenting agents of their own 
 amelioration. And jei such a principle he 
 found, and found it, as he tells us, after ye^rs 
 of intercourse, as the fruit of his greater experi- 
 ence, and his longer observation ; and gives, as 
 the result of it, that convicts, and that, among 
 the most desperate of them all, are not ungov- 
 ernable, and that there is a way of managing 
 even them, and that the way is, without relax- 
 ing, in one iota, from the steadiness of a calm 
 and resolute discipline, to treat them with 
 tenderness, and to show them that you have 
 
SERMON X. 227 
 
 humanity ; and thus a principle, of itself so 
 beautiful, that to expatiate upon it, gives in the 
 eyes of some, an air of fantastic declamation to 
 our argument, is actually deponed to, by an 
 aged and most sagacious observer. It is the 
 very principle of our text ; and it would appear 
 that it keeps a lingering hold of our nature, 
 even in the last and lowest degree of human 
 wickedness; and that, when abandoned by 
 every other principle, this may still be detect- 
 ed,— that even among the most hackneyed and 
 most hardened of malefactors there is still 
 about them a softer part which will give way to 
 the demonstrations of tenderness : that this one 
 ingredient of a better character is still found to 
 su^rvive the dissipation of all the others,— that, 
 fallen as a brother may be, from the moralities 
 which at one time adorned him, the manifested 
 good-will of his fellow man still carries a charm 
 and an influence along with it ; and that, there- 
 fore, there lies in this, an operation which, as 
 no poverty can vitiate, so no depravity can 
 
 extinguish*. i • u • 
 
 Now, this is the very principle which is 
 brought into action, in the deahngs of God 
 with a whole world of m defactors. It looks, 
 as if he confided the whole cause of our recov^ 
 ery, to the influence of a demonstration of good- 
 will. It is truly interesting to mark, what, m 
 the devisings of his unsearchable wisdom, is 
 
 * The operation of the same r-^>P^,\^;!' fj-itir^fin 
 strikingly exemplified by Mrs. Fry. and her coadjutor. , in 
 
 the prison at Newgate. 
 
/ 
 
 228 SERMON X. 
 
 the character which he has made to stand most 
 visibly out, in the great scheme and history oi 
 our redemption : and swrely if there be one fea- 
 ture of prominency more visible than another, 
 it is the love of kindness. There appears to 
 be no other possible way, by which a respond- 
 ing affection can be deposited in the heart of 
 man. Certain it is, that the law of love can- 
 not be carried to its ascendency over us 
 by storm. Authority cahnot command it. 
 Strength cannot implant it. Terror cannot 
 charm it into existence. The threatenings of 
 vengeance may stifle, or they may repel, but 
 they never can woo this delicate principle of 
 our nature, into a warm and confiding attach- 
 ment. The human heart remains shut, in all 
 its receptacles, against the force of these vari- 
 ous applications ; and God, who knew what was 
 in man, seems to have known, that in his dark 
 and guilty bosom, there was but one solitary 
 hold that he had over him ; and that to reach it, 
 he must just put on a look of graciousness, and 
 tell us that he has no pleasure in our death, 
 and manifest towards us the longings of a be- 
 reaved parent, and even humble himself to a 
 suppliant in the cause of our return, and send 
 a Gospel of peace into the world, and bid his 
 messengers to bear throughout all its habita- 
 tions, the tidings of his good-will to the chil- 
 dren of men. This is the topic of his most 
 anxious and repeated demonstration. This 
 manifested good-will of God to his creatures, is 
 the band of love, and the cord of a man, by 
 
SERMON X. 229 
 
 ivhich he draws them. It is true, that from the 
 inaccessible throne of his glory, we see no di- 
 rect emanation of his tenderness upon us, from 
 the face of the King who is invisible. But, as 
 if to make up for this, he sent his Son into the 
 world, and declared him to be God manifest in 
 the flesh, and let us see, in his tears, and in his 
 sympathies, and in all the recorded traits of his 
 kindness, and gentleness, and love, what a God 
 we have to deal with. It is true, that even in 
 love to us, he did not let down one attribute of 
 truth or of majesty which belonged to him. 
 But, in love to us, he hath laid upon his own 
 Son the burden of their vindication ; — and now, 
 that every obstacle is done away ; now, that the 
 barrier which lay across the path of acceptance, 
 is levelled by the power of him who travailed 
 in the greatness of his strength for us ; now, 
 that the blood of atonement has been shed, and 
 that the justice of God has been magnified, and 
 that our iniquities have been placed on the 
 great Sacrifice, and so borne away that there is 
 no more mention of them ; now, that with his 
 dio-nitv entire, and his holiness untainted, the 
 door of heaven may be opened, and smners be 
 called upon to enter in, — is the voice of a friend- 
 ly and beseeching God, lifted up without re- 
 serve, in the hearing of us all ; — his love of kind- 
 ness is published abroad among men ; — and tlii^^ 
 one mighty principle of attraction is brought to 
 bear upon a nature, that might have remained 
 sullen and unmoved under every other appli- 
 cation. 
 
230 SERMON X, 
 
 And, as God, in the measure of restoring a de- 
 generate world unto himself, hath set in opera- 
 tion the very same principle as that which we 
 have attempted to illustrate, — so the operation 
 hath produced the very same result that we have 
 ascribed to it. As soon as his love of kindness 
 is believed, so sooii does the love of gratitude 
 spring up in the heart of the behever. As soon 
 as man gives up his fear and his suspicion of 
 God, and discerns him to be his friend, so soon 
 does he render him the homage of a willing and 
 affectionate loyalty There is not a man who 
 can say, I have known and beheved the love 
 which God hath to us, who cannot say also, f 
 have loved God because he first loved me. 
 There has not, we will venture to affirm, been 
 a single example in the whole history of the 
 church, of a man Avho had a real faith in the 
 overtures of peace and of tenderness which are 
 proposed by the Gospel, and who did not, at thi6 
 same time, exemplify this attribute of the Chris- 
 tain faith, that it worketh by love. It is thus 
 that the faith which recognizes God, as God in 
 Christ reconciling the world unto himself, lies 
 at the turning point of conversion. In this 
 way, and in this way alone, is there an inlet of 
 communication open to the heart of man, for 
 that principle of love to God, which gives all 
 its power and all its character to the new obe- 
 dience of the gospel. So soon as a man really 
 knows the truth, and no man can be said to 
 know what he does not believe, will this truth 
 enthrone a new affection in his bosom, which 
 
SERMON X. 231 
 
 will set him free from the dominion of all such 
 affections as are earthly and rehellious. The 
 whole style and spirit of his obedience are 
 transformed. The man now walks with the 
 vigour, and the confidence, and the enlarge- 
 ment, of one who is set at liberty. It looks a 
 mysterious revolution in the general eye of the 
 world. But the fact is, that from the moment 
 a sinner closes with the overtures of the gospel, 
 from that moment a new era is established in 
 the history of his mind altogether. As soon as 
 he sees what he never saw before, so soon does 
 he feel what he never felt before. Without 
 the faith of the gospel he may serve God in the 
 spirit of bondage ; he may be driven, by the 
 terrors of his law, into many outward and re- 
 luctant conformities; he may even, without 
 the influence of these terrors, maintain a thou- 
 sand decencies of taste, and custom, and es- 
 tablished observation. But he is still an utter 
 stranger to the first and the greatest command- 
 ment. There may be the homage of many a 
 visible movement with the body, while, in the 
 whole bent and disposition of the soul there is 
 nothing but aversion, and distance, and enmity. 
 Even the word of the gospel may be address- 
 ed, Sabbath after Sabbath, and that too, to 
 hearers who offer no positive resistance to it, 
 —but coming to them only in word, they re- 
 main as motionless and unimpressed as ever, 
 and with an utter dormancy in their hearts, as 
 to any responding movement of gratitude. 1 he 
 heart, in fact, remains unapproachable in eve- 
 
232 SERMOiN X. 
 
 ry other way, but by the gospel coming to it, 
 not in word only, but in power, and in the Ho- 
 ly Ghost, and in much assurance. Then is it, 
 that the love of God is shed abroad in our 
 hearts; and that the gospel approves itself to 
 be his power, and his wisdom, to the sanctifi- 
 cation of all who believe in it. 
 
 Now, the theologians to whom we allude, 
 have set up obstacles in the way of such a pro= 
 cess. They hold a language about the disin- 
 terested love of God, and demand this at the 
 very outset of a man's conversion, in such a 
 way, as may retard his entrance upon a life of 
 faith,— as may have prolonged the darkness of 
 many an inquirer, and have kept him in a state 
 of despair, whom a right understanding of the 
 gospel would have relieved of all his doubts, 
 and all his perplexities. They seem to look 
 on the love of gratitude, as having in it a taint 
 of selfishness. They say that to love a being, 
 because he is my benefactor, is little better 
 than to love the benefit which he has confer- 
 red upon me ; and that this, instead of any evi- 
 dence of a state of grace, is the mere effect of 
 an appetite which belongs essentially and uni- 
 versally to the animal state of nature. They 
 appear to have missed the distinction, between 
 the love that is felt towards the benefit itself, 
 and the love of gratitude that is felt towards 
 the author of it ; though certainly there are 
 Jiere two objects of affection altogether dis- 
 tinct from, each other. My liking for the gift 
 is a different phase of mind from my liking for 
 
SERiMON X. 233 
 
 the giver. In the one exercise, I am looking to 
 a different object, and my thoughts have a dif- 
 ferent employment, from what they have in the 
 other. Had I an affection for the gift, without 
 an affection for the giver, then migtit I evince 
 an unmixed selfishness of character. But I 
 may have both ; and my affection for the giver 
 may be purely in obedience to that law of reci- 
 procity, whereby if another likes me, I am dispose 
 ed by that circumstance, and by that alone, to 
 like him back again. The gift may serve merely 
 the purpose of an indication. It is the medium 
 through which I perceive the love that another 
 bears me. But it is possible for me to perceive 
 this through another medium, and, in this case, 
 the rising gratitude of my bosom might look a 
 purer and more disinterested emotion. But 
 the truth is, that it retains the very same cha- 
 racter, though a gift has been the occasion of 
 its excitement, — and, therefore, it ought not to 
 have been so assimilated to the principle of sel- 
 fishness. It ought not to have been so discour- 
 aged, and made the object of suspicion, at that 
 moment of its evolution, when the returning sin- 
 ner looks by faith to the truths and the pro- 
 mises of the gospel, and sees in them the tender- 
 ness of an inviting God. It ought not to have 
 been so stigmatized, as a mere portion of his un- 
 renewed nature; for, in truth, it will heighten 
 and grow upon him, with every step in the ad- 
 vancement of his moral renovation. Ji will be 
 one of the gracefuUest of his accomplishment? 
 30 
 
234 SfcRMON X. 
 
 in this world ; and so far from being extinguish- 
 ed in the next, along with the baser and more 
 selfish affections of our constitution, it will pour 
 an animating spirit into many a song of ecstacy, 
 to him who loved us, and washed us from our sins 
 hi his own blood. The law of love begetting 
 love, will obtain in eternity. Like the law of re- 
 ciprocal attraction in the material world, it will 
 cement the immutable and everlasting order of 
 that moral system, which is to emerge with the 
 new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwell- 
 eth righteousness. The love which emanates 
 from the throne of God, upon his surrounding 
 family, will call back a voice of blessing, and 
 thanksgiving, and glory, from all the members of 
 it. And the love which his children bear to each 
 other, will) in like manner, be reflected and 
 multiplied. All that is wrong in selfishness 
 will be there unknown. But gratitude, so far 
 from being counted an unseemly companion 
 forparadise ; will be one chief ingredient in the 
 fulness of its joy; one of the purest and most 
 exquisite of those pleasures, which are for 
 evermore. 
 
 The first consideration then, upon which we 
 would elevate gratitude to the rank of a virtue, 
 is, that in its object, it is altogether distinct 
 from selfishness. It is enough, indeed, to dis- 
 solve the imagination of any kindred character 
 between selfishness and gratitude, that the man 
 without selfishness, seems to the eye of a be- 
 holder, as standing on a lofty eminence of vir- 
 tue : Th^ man without gratitude, is held, by 
 
SERMON X, 23^ 
 
 all, to be a monster of deformity. Give me a 
 man who seizes with ravenous appropriation 
 all that I have to bestow, — and who hoards it, 
 or feeds upon it, or, in any way rejoices over it, 
 without one grateful movement of his heart to- 
 wards me, — and you lay before me a character, 
 not merely unlike, but diametrically opposite, 
 to the character of him who obtains the very 
 same gift, and perhaps, derives from the use of 
 it, an equal, or a greater degree of enjoyment, 
 to the sensitive part of his nature, — but who, 
 in addition to all this, has thought, and affec- 
 tion, and the higher principles of his nature, 
 excited by the consideration of the giver ; and 
 looks to the manifested love that appears in 
 this act of generosity ; and is touched with love 
 back again ; and, under the influence of this 
 responding affection, conceives the kindest 
 wishes, and pours out the warmest prayers, for 
 the interest of his benefactor, and shows him 
 all the symptoms of friendship, and suf rounds 
 him with all its services. 
 
 The second consideration, upon which we 
 would elevate gratitude to the rank of a pure 
 virtue, has already been glanced at. Were it not 
 a virtue, it would have no place in heaven. 
 Did it only appertain to the unrenewed part 
 of our nature, it would find no admittance 
 among the saints in paradise. But one of the 
 songs of the redeemed, is a song of gratitude. 
 
 And, thirdly, by looking more closely to this 
 affection, both init^ origin and in it« exercise?. 
 
236 SERMON X. 
 
 we shall perceive in it, more ctearly, all the 
 characteristics of virtue. 
 
 Let it be remarked then, that an affection 
 may simply exist, and yet be no evidence of 
 any virtue, or of any moral worth in the holder 
 of it. I may look on a beautiful prospect, and 
 be drawn out to an involuntary sentiment of ad- 
 miration. Or, I may look on my infant child, 
 and, without one effort of volition, feel a paren- 
 tal tenderness towards it. Or, I may be pre- 
 sent at a scene of distress, and without choosing 
 or willing it to be so, I may be moved to the 
 softest compassion. And, in this way, I may 
 have a character made up of many affections, 
 some of which are tasteful, some of which are- 
 most amiable in themselves, and some of which 
 are most useful to society; and yet, none of which 
 may possess the smallest portion of the essential 
 character of virtue. They may be brought in- 
 to exercise, without any working of a sense of 
 duty whatever. One of those we have specifi- 
 ed — the instinctive affection of parents for 
 their young, is exemplified in all its strength, 
 and in all its tenderness, by the inferior ani- 
 mals. And, therefore, if we want to know 
 what that is which constitutes the character 
 of virtue, or moral worth, in a human being, 
 we must look to something else, than to the 
 mere existence of certain affections, however 
 valuable they may prove to others, or what- 
 ever gracefulness they may shed over the com- 
 plexion of him who possesses them. 
 
 Now, it would be raising a collateral into a 
 
SERMON X. 237 
 
 jonain topic, were we to enter upon a full ex- 
 planation of the matter that has now been sug- 
 gested. And we shall, therefore, briefly re- 
 mark, that to give the character of virtue to any 
 grace of the inner man, the will, acting under 
 a sense of duty, must, in some way or other, 
 have been concerned, in the establishment, or 
 in the continuance of it ;' and that to give the 
 same character of virtue to a deed of the outer 
 man, the will must also be concerned. A deed 
 is onfy virtuous in as far as it is voluntary; and 
 it is only in proportion to the share which the 
 will has in the performance of it, and the will 
 impelling us to do, what we are persuaded 
 ought to be done, that there can be awarded, 
 to the deed in question, any character of moral 
 estimation. 
 
 This will explain what the circumstances are, 
 under which the gratitude of a human being 
 may at one time be an instinct, and at another 
 time a virtue. I may enter the house of an in- 
 dividual who is an utter stranger to the habit 
 of acting under a sense of duty ; who is just as 
 much the creature of mere impulse, as th^ ani- 
 mals beneath him ; and who, therefore, though 
 some of these impulses are more characteristic 
 of his condition as a man, and most subservient 
 to the good of his fellows, may be considered 
 as possessing no virtue whatever, in the strict 
 and proper sense of the term. But he has the 
 property of being affected by external causes. 
 And I, by some ministration of friendship, may 
 flash upon his mind such an overpowering con^ 
 
2.38 SERMON X, 
 
 viction oHhe good-will that I bear him, as to 
 affect him with a sense of gratitude even unto 
 tears. The moral obhgation of gratitude may 
 not be present to his mind at all. But the emo- 
 tion of gratitude comes into his heart unbid- 
 den, and finds its vent in acknowledgments, 
 and blessings, on the person of his benefactor. 
 We would say, of such a person, that he pos- 
 sesses a happier original constitution than ano- 
 ther, who, in the same circumstances, would not 
 be so powerfully or so tenderly affected. Ancl 
 yet he may have hitherto evinced nothing 
 more than the workings o-f a mere instinct, which 
 springs spontaneously within him, and gives its 
 own impulse to his words and his performan- 
 ces, without a sense of duty having any share 
 in the matter, or without the will prompting 
 / the individual by any such consideration, as. 
 let me do this thing because 1 ought to do it. 
 
 Let us now conceive the moral sense to be 
 admitted to its share of influence over this prp- 
 ceeding. Let it be consulted on the questio n 
 of what ought to be felt, and what ought to be 
 done, by one being, when another evinces the 
 love of kindness towards him. A mere in-< 
 stinct may, in point of fact, draw out a return 
 of love and of service back again. But it is 
 the province of the moral sense to pronounce 
 on the point of obligation, and we speak its 
 universal suggestion, when we say, that the 
 love of gratitude ought to be felt, and the ser- 
 vices of gratitude ought to be rendered. 
 Now, to make this decision of the moral 
 
SERMON X. 239 
 
 sense practically effectual, and, indeed, to make 
 the moral sense have any thing to do with this 
 question at all, the feeling of gratitude must, in 
 f?ome way or other, be dependent either for its 
 existence, or its growth, or its continuance, up- 
 on the will ; and the same will must also have a 
 command over the services of gratitude. The 
 moral sense, in fact, never interposes with any 
 dictate, or with any declaration about the 
 feelings, or the conduct of man, unless in so far 
 as the will of man has an influence, and a pow- 
 er of regulation over them. It never makes the 
 rate of the circulation of the blood a question 
 of duty, because this is altogether an involun- 
 tary movement. And it never would have of- 
 fered any authoritative intimation, about the 
 way in which gratitude ought to be felt, or 
 ought to be expressed, unless the will had had 
 some kind of presiding sovereignty over both 
 the degree an4 the workings of this affection. 
 
 The first way, then, in which the will may 
 have to do with the love of gratitude, is by the 
 putting forth of a desire for the possession of it. 
 It may long to realize this moral accomplish- 
 ment. It may hunger and thirst after this 
 branch of righteousness. Even though it has 
 not any such power under its command, as 
 would enable it to fulfil such a volition, the vo- 
 lition itself has, upon it, the stamp and the cha- 
 racter of virtue. The man who habitually wills 
 to have in his heart a love of gratitude towards 
 God, is a man at least of holy desires, if not of 
 holy attainments. And, when we consider that 
 
240 SERMON X. 
 
 a way has actually been established, in which 
 the desire may be followed up by the attain- 
 ment, — when we read of the promise given to 
 those who seek after God, — when we learn the 
 assurance that he will grant the heart's desire 
 of those who will stir themselves up to lay hold 
 of him, — when we think that prayer is the na« 
 tural expression of desire for an object which 
 man cannot reach, but w hich God is both able 
 and willing to confer upon him,— then do we 
 see how the very existence of the love of gra- 
 titude may have had its pure and holy com- 
 mencement, in such a habitude of the will as has 
 the essential character of virtue engraven upon 
 it. "-Keep yourselves," says the Apostle, " in 
 the love of God, by praying in the Holy Ghost.'- 
 But, again, there are certain doings of the 
 mind, over which the will has a control, and' by 
 which the affection of gratitude may either be 
 brought into being, or be sustained in lively and 
 persevering exercise. At the bidding of the 
 will, I can think of one topic, rather than of an- 
 other. I can transfer my mind to any given ob- 
 ject of contemplation. I can keep that object 
 steadily in view, and make an effort to do so, 
 when placed in such circumstances as might 
 lead me to distraction or forgetfulness. And 
 it is in this way that moral praise, or moral 
 responsibility, may be attached to the love of 
 gratitude. Ere the heart can be moved by this 
 affection to another, there must be in the mind 
 a certain appropriate object, that is fitted to call 
 it, and to keep it, in existence,— and that object 
 
SERMON X. 241 
 
 is the love of kindness which the other bears 
 me. I may endeavour, and I may succeed in 
 the endeavour, to hold this love of kindness in 
 daily and perpetual remembrance. If the will 
 have to do with the exercises of thought andme- 
 mory, then the will may be responsible for the 
 gratitude that would spring in my bosom, did I 
 only think of the love of God, and that would 
 continue with me in the shape of an habitual 
 affection, did I only keep that love in habitual 
 remembrance. It is thus that the forgetfulness 
 of God is chargeable with criminality, — and it 
 will appear a righteous thing in the day of 
 judgment, when they, who are thus forgetful 
 of him, shall be turned into hell. It is this 
 which arms, with such a moral and condem- 
 natory force, the expostulation he holds with 
 Israel,, "that Israel doth not know, that my 
 people do not consider." It is because we like 
 not to retain God in our knowledge, that our 
 minds become reprobate: — and, on the other 
 hand, it is by a continuous effort of my will, 
 towards the thought of him, that I forget not 
 his benefits. It is by the strenuousness of a 
 voluntary act, that I connect the idea of an un- 
 s^een benefactor, with all the blessings of my 
 present lot, and all the anticipations of my 
 futurity. It is by a combat with the most ur- 
 gent propensities of nature, that I am ever 
 looking beyond this surrounding materialism, 
 and setting God and his love before me all the 
 day long. There is no virtue, it is allowed, 
 31 
 
242 SERMON X^ 
 
 without voliiotary exertion; but thh is the verj 
 character which runs throughout the whole 
 work and exercise of faith. To keep himself 
 in the love of God is a habit, with the mainte- 
 nance of which the will of man has most essen- 
 tially to do, because it i&at his will that he keeps 
 himself in the thought of God's love towards 
 him. To bid away from me such intrusions of 
 sense, and of time, as would shut God out of 
 my recollections ; to keep alive the impression 
 of him in the midst of bustle, and company, and 
 worldly avocations; to recall the thought of 
 him and of his kindness, under crosses, and 
 vexations, and annoyances; to be still, and 
 know that he is God, even when beset with 
 temptations to impatience and discontent; ne- 
 ver to lose sight of him, as merciful and gra- 
 cious; and above all, never to let go my hold of 
 that great Propitiation, by which, in every time 
 of trouble, I have the privilege of access with 
 confidence to my reconciled Father; these are 
 all so many acts of faith, bat they ate just such 
 acts as the will bears a share, and a sovereignty, 
 in the performance of. And, as they are the 
 very acts which go to aliment and to sustain the 
 Jove of gratitude within me, it may be seen, how ' 
 an affection which, in the first instance, may 
 spring involuntarily, and be therefore regarded 
 as a mere instinct of nature, or as bearing up- 
 on- it a complexion of selfishness, may, in ano- 
 ther view, have upon it a complexion of deep- 
 est sacredness, and be rendered unto God in 
 the shape of a duteous and devoted offering 
 
SERMON X. 243 
 
 if oai a voluntary agent, and be, in fact, the la- 
 borious result of a most difficult, and persever- 
 ing, and pains-taking habit of obedience. 
 
 And if this be true of the mere sense of gra- 
 titude, it is still more obviously true of the ser- 
 vices of gratitude. "What shall I render unto 
 the Lord for all his benefits?" is the genuine 
 language of this affection. It seeks to make a 
 gratifying return of service, and that, under 
 the feeling that it ought to do so. Or, in other 
 words, do we behold that it is the w ill of man, 
 prompted by a sense of duty, Avhich leads him 
 on to the obedience of gratitude, and that the 
 whole of this obedience is pervaded by the es- 
 sential character of virtue. This is tlie love of 
 God, that ye keep his commandments. This 
 is the most gratifying return unto him, that ye 
 do those thin'gs which are pleasing in his sight. 
 And thus it is, that the love of gratitude may 
 be vindicated in its character of moral worth, 
 from its first commencement in the heart to its 
 ultimate effect on the walk and conversation. 
 It is originally distinct from selfishness in its ob* 
 ject; and it derives a virtuousness at its very 
 outset, from the aspirations of a soul b'ent on 
 the acquirement of it, because bent on being 
 what it ought to be ; and it is sustained, both 
 in life and in exercise, by such habits of thought . 
 as are of voluntary cultivation; and it nobly 
 sustains an aspect of moral righteousness on- 
 wards to the final result of its operation on the 
 character, by setting him who is under its pow- 
 er, on a career of obedience to God, and m- 
 
iU SERMON X. 
 
 troducing him to an arduous coiitest of princi^ 
 pie, with all the influences of sense and of the 
 world. 
 
 If,* to render an affection virtuous, the will 
 acting under a sense of duty, should be con- 
 cerned either in producing or in perpetuating 
 it; then the love of moral esteem coming into 
 the heart as an involuntrry sensation, may, in 
 certain circumstances, have as little of the cha- 
 racter of virtue as the love of gratitude. In 
 this respect, both these affections are upon a 
 footing with each other ; and the first ought not 
 to have been exalted at the expense of the se- 
 cond. That either be upheld within us in our 
 present state, there must, in fact, be the put- 
 ting forth of the same voluntary control over 
 the thoughts and contemplations of the under- 
 standing ; the same actue exercise of faith ; 
 the same laborious resistance to all those ur- 
 gencies of sense which would expel from the 
 mind the idea of an unseen and spiritual ob- 
 ject; the same remembrance of God sustained 
 by effort, and prayer, and meditation. 
 
 II. . We now feel ourselves in a condition to 
 speak of the Gospel, in its free and gratuitous 
 character ; to propose its blessings as a gift ,' 
 to hold out the pardon, and the strength, and 
 all the other privileges which it proclaims to 
 believers, as so many articles for their imme- 
 diate acceptance ; to make it known to men 
 that they are not to delay their compliance 
 with the overtures of mercy, till the disinterest- 
 ed love of God arises in their hearts ; but that 
 
SERMON X. 2i5 
 
 they have a warrant for entering even now, in- 
 to instant reconciliation with God. Nor are 
 we to dread the approach of any moral contami* 
 nation, though when, after their eyes are open- 
 ed to the marvellous spectacle of a pleading, 
 and offering, and beseeching God, holding out 
 eternal life unto the guilty, through Ihe propi- 
 tiation which his own Son hath made for them, 
 they should, from that moment, open their 
 whole soul, to the influences, of gratitude, and 
 love the God who thus hath first loved them. 
 
 We conclude then with remarking, that the 
 whole of this argument gives us another view 
 of the importance of faith. We do not say all 
 for it that we ought, when we say, that by faith 
 we are justified in the sight of God. By faith 
 also our hearts are purified. It is in fact the pri- 
 mary and the presiding principle of regenera- 
 tion. It brings the heart into contact with 
 that influence, by which the love of gratitude 
 is awakened. The love of God to us, if it is 
 not believed, will exert no more power over 
 our affections, than if it were a nonentity. 
 They are the preachers of faith, then, who 
 alone deal out to their hearers, the elementary 
 and pervading spirit of the Christian morality. 
 And the men who have been stigmatized as the 
 enemies of good works, are the very men, who 
 are most sedulously employed in depositing 
 within you, that good seed which has its fruit 
 imto holiness. We are far from asserting, that 
 the agency of grace is not concerned, in every 
 step of that process, by which a sinner is con- 
 
246 SERMON X. 
 
 ducted from the outset of his conversion, to the 
 state of being perfect, and complete in the 
 whole will of God. But there is a harmony 
 between the processes of grace and of nature; 
 and in the same manner, as in human society, 
 the actual conviction of a neighbour's good- will 
 to me, takes the precedency in point of order 
 of any returning movement of gratitude on my 
 part, so, in the great concerns of our fellow- 
 ship with God, my belief that he loves me, is 
 an event prior and preparatory to the event of 
 my loving him. So that the primary obstacle 
 to the love of God is not the want of human 
 gratitude, but the want' of human faith. The 
 reason why man is not excited to the love of 
 God by the revelation of God's love to him, is 
 just because he does not believe that revela- 
 tion. This is the barrier which lies between 
 the guilty, and their offended Lawgiver. It ia 
 not the ingratitude of man, but the incredulity 
 of man, that needs, in the first instance, to be 
 overcome. It is the sullenness, and the hard- 
 ness, and the obstinacy of unbelief which 
 stands as a gate of iron, between him and his 
 enlargement. Could the kindness of God, in 
 Christ Jesus, be seen by him, the softening of 
 a kindness back again, would be felt by him. 
 And let us cease to wonder, then, at the preach- 
 ers of the gospel, when they lay upon belief all 
 the stress of a fundamental operation ; — when 
 they lavish so much of their strength on the es- 
 tablishment of a principle, which is not only 
 initial, but indispensable ; when they try so 
 
SERMON X. -247 
 
 strenuously to charm that into existence, with- 
 out which all the elements of a spiritual obedi- 
 ence are in a state of dormancy or of death ; — 
 when they labour at the only practicable way, 
 by which the heart of a sinner can be touched, 
 and attracted towards God ; — when they try 
 so repeatedly, to hold and to fasten him, by 
 that link which God himself hath put into their 
 hands — and bring the mighty principle to bear 
 upon their hearers, which any one of us may 
 exemplify upon the poorest, and by which 
 both Howard and Fry have tried with suc- 
 cess, to soften and to reclaim the most worth- 
 less of mankind. 
 
 This also suggests a practical direction to 
 Christians, for keeping themselves in the love 
 of God. They must keep themselves in the 
 habit, and in the exercise of faith. They must 
 hold fast that conviction in their minds, the 
 presence of which is indispensable to the keep- 
 ing of that affection in their hearts. This is 
 one of the methods recommended by the apos- 
 tle Jude, when he tells his disciples to build 
 themselves up on their most holy faith. This 
 direction to you is both intelliglible and prac» 
 ticable. Keep in view the truths which you 
 have learned. Cherish that belief of'them 
 which you q^lready possess. Recall them to 
 your thoughts, and, in general, they will not 
 come alone, but they will come accompanied 
 by their own power, and their own evidence. 
 You may as well think of maintaining a stead- 
 fast attachment to vour frir^nd. after vou have 
 
248 SERMON X. 
 
 expunged from your memory all the demonstra- 
 tions of kindness he ever bestowed upon you, 
 as to think of keeping your heart in the love of 
 God, after the thoughts and contemplations of 
 the gospel have fled from it. It is just by 
 holding these fast, and by building yourself up 
 on their firm certainty, that you preserve this 
 affection. Any man, versant in the matters of 
 experimental religion, knows well what it is, 
 when a blight and a barrenness come over the 
 mind, and when, under the power of such a vi- 
 sitation, it loses all sensibility towards God, 
 There is, at that time, a hiding of his counte- 
 nance, and you lose your hold of the manifest- 
 ation of that love, wherewith God loved the 
 world, even when he sent his only begotten 
 Son into it, that we might live through him. 
 You will recover a right frame, when you re- 
 cover your hold of this consideration. If you 
 want * to recair the strayed affection to your 
 heart-r-recall to your mind the departed ob- 
 ject of contemplation. If you want to rein- 
 state the'principle of love in your bosom — rein- 
 state faith, and it will w ork by love. It is got 
 at through the medium of believing, and trust- 
 ing ; — Nor do we know a more summary, and 
 at the same time, a more likly direction for li- 
 ving a life of holy and heavenly affection, than 
 that you should live a life of faith. 
 
SERMON XL 
 
 THE AFFECTION OF MORAL ESTEEM TOWARDS GOD, 
 
 Psalm xxvii. 4. 
 
 « One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek 
 after 5 that 1 may dwell in the house of the Lord all the 
 days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to 
 enquire in his temple." 
 
 In our last discourse we adverted to the effect 
 of a certain theological speculation about love, 
 in darkening the freeness of the gospel, and in- 
 tercepting the direct influence of its overtures 
 and its calls on the mind of an enquirer. Ere 
 we conceive the love of gratitude towards 
 another, we must see in him the love of kmd- 
 ness towards us; and thus, by those who have 
 failed to distinguish between a love of the bene- 
 fit, and a love of the benefactor, has the virtue 
 of gratitude been resolved into the love of our- 
 selves. And they have thought that there must 
 surely be a purer affection than this, to mark 
 the outset of the great transition from sin unto 
 righteousness; and the one they have specified 
 
 32 
 
250 SERMON XI. 
 
 is the disinterested love of God. They have 
 given to this last affection a place so early, as 
 to distract the attention of an enquirer from that 
 which is primary. The invitation of " come 
 and buy w^ithout money, and vt^ithout price," is 
 not heard by the sinner along with the exaction 
 of loving God for himself, — of loving him, on 
 account of his excellencies, — of loving him, be- 
 cause he is lovely. Let us, therefore, try to as- 
 certain whether even this love of moral esteem 
 is not subordinate to the faith of the gospel; 
 and whether it follows, that because this affec- 
 tion forms so indispensable a part of godliness, 
 faith should, on that account, be deposed from 
 the place of antecedency which belongs to it. 
 
 And here let it be most readily and most 
 abundantly conceded, that we are not perfect 
 £lnd complete, in the whole of God's will, till 
 the love of moral esteem be in us, as well as the 
 love of gratitude, — till that principle, of which, 
 by nature, we are utterly destitute, be made to 
 arise in our hearts, and to have there a tho- 
 rough establishment, and operation, — till we 
 love God, not merely on account of his love to 
 our persons, but on account of the glory, and 
 the residing excellence, which meet the eye of 
 the spiritual beholder, upon his own character. 
 We are. not preparing for heaven, — we shall be 
 utterly incapable of sharing in the noblest of its 
 enjoyments, — we shall not feel ourselves sur- 
 rounded by an element of congeniality in para- 
 
SERMON XI. 251 
 
 dise,— there will be no happiness for us, even in 
 the neighbourhood of the throne of God, and 
 with the moral lustre of the Godhead made 
 visible to our eyes, if we are strangers to the 
 emotion of loving God for himself, — if addi- 
 tional altogether, to the consideration that God 
 is looking with complacency upon me, I do not 
 feel touched and attracted by the beauties of his 
 character, when I look with the eye of contem- 
 plation towards him. I am without the most 
 essential of all moral accomplishments in myself^ 
 if I am without the esteem of moral accomplish- 
 ments in another ; and if my heart be of such a 
 constitution that nothing in the character of 
 God can draw my admiration, or my regard, to 
 him — then, though admitted within the portals 
 of the city which hath foundations, and remov- 
 ed from the torments of hell, 1 am utterly unfit 
 for the joys and the exercises of heaven. I may 
 spend an eternity of exemption from pain, but 
 without one rapture of positive felicity to bright- 
 en it. Heaven, in fact, would be a wilderness 
 to my heart ; and, in the midst of its acclaim- 
 ing throng would I droop, and be in heaviness 
 under a sense of perpetual dissolution. 
 
 And let this convince us of the mighty tran- 
 sition, that must be described by the men of this 
 world, ere they are meet for the other world of 
 the spirits of just men made perfect. It is not 
 speaking of this transition, in terms too great 
 
2j2 sermon XL 
 
 and too lofty, to say, that they must be bom 
 again, and made new creatures, and called out 
 of darkness into a light that is marvellous. The 
 tntth is, that out of the pale of vital Christianity, 
 there is not to be found among all the varieties 
 of taste, and appetite, and sentimental admira- 
 tion, any love for God as he is, — any relish for 
 the holiness of his character, — any echoing tes- 
 timony, in the bosom of alienated man, to what 
 is graceful, or to what is venerable in the char- 
 acter of the Deity. He may be feelingly alive 
 to the beauties of what is seen, and what is sen- 
 sible. The scenery of external nature may 
 charm him. The sublimities of a surrounding 
 materialism may kindle and dilate him with 
 images of grandeur. Even the moralities of a 
 fellow-creature may engage him; and these, with 
 the works of genius, may fascinate him into an 
 idolatrous veneration of human power, or of 
 human virtue. But while he thus luxuriates and 
 delights himself with the forms of derived ex- 
 cellence, there is no sensibility in his heart to- 
 wards God. He rather prefers to keep by the 
 things that are made, and, surrounded by them, 
 <to bury himself into a forgetfulness of his Ma- 
 ker. He is most in his element, when in feeling, 
 or in employment, he is most at a distance from 
 God. There is a coldness, or a hatred, or a 
 terror, which mixes up with all his contempla- 
 tions of the Deity ; and gives to bis mind a kind 
 of sensitive recoil from the very thought of 
 
SERMON XI. 253 
 
 iiim. He would like to live always in the world, 
 and be content with such felicity as it can give, 
 and cares not, could he only get what his heart 
 is set upon here, and be permitted to enjoy it 
 for ever, though he had no sight of God, and no 
 fellowship with him through eternity. The 
 event to which, of all others, he looks forward 
 with the most revolting sense of aversion and 
 dismay, is that event which is to bring him into 
 a nearer contact with God, — which is to dissolve 
 his present close relationship with the creature, 
 and to conduct his disembodied spirit into the 
 immediate presence of the Creator. There is 
 nothing in death, in grim, odious, terrific 
 death, that he less desires, or is more afraid of, 
 than a nearer manifestation of the Deity. The 
 world, in truth, the warm and the well known 
 w^orld, is his home ; and the men who live in it, 
 and are as regardless of the Divinity as himself, 
 form the whole of his companionship. Were 
 it not for the fear of hell, he would shrink from 
 heaven as a dull and melancholy exile. All 
 its songs of glory to him who sitteth on the 
 throne, would be to his heart a burden and a 
 weariness ; — and thus it is, that the foundation 
 of every natural man has its place in that pe- 
 rishable earth, from which death will soon car- 
 ry him away, and which the fiery indignation 
 of God will at length burn up y" and as to 
 the being who endureth for ever, and with 
 whom alone he has to do, he sees in him no 
 
254 SERMON XL 
 
 form nor comeliness, nor no beauty that he 
 should desire him. 
 
 Now, is not this due to the darkness of na- 
 ture, as well as to the depravity of nature? 
 There is in our diseased constitution, a spirit- 
 ual blindness to the excellencies of the God- 
 head, as well as a spiritual disrelish for them. 
 The truth is, that these two elements go to- 
 gether in the sad progress of human degene- 
 racy. Man liked not to retain God in his know- 
 ledge, and God gave him over to a reprobate 
 mind ; and again, man walking in vanity, and an 
 enemy to God by wicked works, had his un- 
 derstanding darkened, and was visited with ig- 
 norance, and bhndness of heart. We do not 
 apprehend God, and therefore it is that we 
 must be renewed in the knowledge of him, ere 
 we can be formed again to the love of him. 
 The'natural man can no more admire the Deity 
 through the obscurities in which he is shrouded, 
 than he can admire a landscape which he never 
 »aw, and which at the time of his approach to it, 
 is wrapped in the gloom of midnight. He can no 
 more, with every effort to stir up his faculties 
 to lay hold of him, catch an endearing view 
 of the Deity, than his eye can by straining, 
 penetrate its way through a darkened firmament, 
 to the features of that material loveliness which 
 lies before bim, and around him. It must be 
 lighted up to him, ere he can love it, or enjoy it, 
 and tell us what the degree of his affection for 
 
SERMON XI. 25.3 
 
 the scenery would be, if instead of being lighted 
 up by the peaceful approach of a summer morn. 
 It were to blaze into sudden visibility, with all 
 its cultivation and cottages, by the fire^s of a 
 bursting volcano. Tell us, if all the glory and 
 gracefulness of the landscape which had thus 
 started into view, would charm the beholder 
 for a moment, from the terrors of his coming 
 destruction ! Tell us, if it is possible for a sen- 
 tient being, to admit another thought in such 
 circumstances as these, than the thought of his 
 own preservation. O would not the sentiment 
 of fear about himself, cast out every setititnent 
 of love for all that he now saw, and were he 
 only safe could look upon with exstacy ? — and 
 let the beauty be as exquisite as it may, w^ould 
 not all the power and pleasure of its enchant- 
 ments fly away from his bosom, were it only 
 seen through the glowing fervency of elements 
 that threatened to destroy him ? 
 
 Let us now conceive, that through that thick 
 spiritual darkness by which every child of na- 
 ture is encompassed, there was forced upon 
 him, a view of the countenance of the Deity, — 
 that the perfections of God were made visible, — 
 and that the character on which the angels of 
 paradise gaze with delight, because they there 
 behold all the lineaments of moral grandeur, 
 and moral loveliness, were placed before the eye 
 of his mind, in bright and convincing manifes- 
 tation. It is very true, that on ^vhat he would 
 
256 SERMON XI. 
 
 be thus made to see, all that is fau- and mag- 
 nificent are assembled, — that whatever of great- 
 ness, or whatever of beauty can be found in 
 creation, is but a faint and shadowy transcript 
 of that original substantial excellence, which 
 resides in the conceptions of him who is the 
 fountain of being, — that all the pleasing of good- 
 ^ ness, and all the venerable of worth, and all the 
 * sovereign command of moral dignity meet and 
 are realised on the person of God, — that through 
 the whole mnge of universal existence, there 
 cannot be devised a single feature of excel- 
 lency, %^hich does not serve to enrich the cha- 
 racter of him who sustains all things, and who 
 originated all things. No wonder that the pure 
 eye of an angel takes in such fulness of plea- 
 sure from a contemplation so ravishing. But 
 let all this burst upon the eye of a sinner, and 
 let the truth and the righteousness of God out of 
 Christ stand before it in visible array, along with 
 the other glories of character which belong to 
 him. The love of moral esteem, you may say, 
 ought to arise in his bosom; — but it cannot. 
 The affection is in such circumstances impos- 
 sible. The man is in terror. And he can no 
 more look with complacency upon his God, 
 than he can delight himself with the fair forms 
 of a landscape, opened to his view, by the flashes 
 of an impending volcano. He cannot draw 
 an emotion so sw eet, and dehghtful as love, from 
 the view of that countenance, on which he be- 
 
SERMON XI. 257 
 
 holds a purpose of vengeance against himself, as 
 one of the children of iniquity. The fear which 
 hath torment casteth out this affection altoge- 
 ther. There is positively no room for it within 
 the bosom of a sentient being, along with the 
 dread, and the alarm by which he is agitated. It 
 is this which explains the recoil of his sinful na- 
 ture, from the thought of God. The sense of 
 guilt comes into his heart, and the terrors and 
 the agitations of guilt come along with it. It 
 is because he sees the justice of God frowning 
 upon him, and the truth of God pledged to the 
 execution of its threatenings against him, and 
 the holiness of God, which cannot look upon 
 him without abhorrence, and all the sacred at- 
 tributes of a nature that is jealous, and un- 
 changeable, leagued against him for his everlast- 
 ing destruction. He cannot love the Being, 
 with the very idea of whom there is mixed up 
 a sense of danger, and a dread of condemnation, 
 and all the images of a wretched eternity. We 
 cannot love God, so long as we look upon him 
 as an enemy armed to destroy us. Ere we love 
 him, we must be made to feel the security, 
 and the enlargement of one who knows him- 
 self to be safe. Let him take his rod away 
 from me, and let not his fear, terrify me, — and 
 th^ may I love him and not fear him ; but it is 
 not so w ith me. 
 
 But let him who commanded the light to 
 shine out of darkness, shine in our hearts 
 
 33 
 
258 SERMON XI. 
 
 to give us the light of the knowledge of his own 
 glory, in the face of Jesus Christ, — let us only 
 look upon him as God in Christ reconciling 
 the world unto himself, and not imputing unto 
 them their trespasses, — let him without expung- 
 ing the characters of truth, and majesty, from 
 that one aspect of perfect excellence which be- 
 longs to him, — let him in his own unsearchable 
 wisdom devise a way, by which he can both 
 bring them out in the eye of sinners with bright- 
 er illustration, and make these sinners feel, that 
 they are safe, — let him lift off from*the men of 
 this guilty world, the burden of his violated law, 
 and cause it to be borne by another who can 
 magnify that law, and make it honourable, — let 
 him publish a full release from all its penalties, 
 but in such a way, as that the truth which pro- 
 claimed them, and the justice which should 
 execute them, shall remain untainted under 
 this dispensation of mercy, — let him instead of 
 awaking the sword of vengeance against us, 
 awake it against a sufferer of such worth and 
 such dignity, that his blood shall be the atone- 
 ment of a world, and by pouring out his soul 
 unto the death, he shall make the pardon of the 
 transgressor meet, and be at one with the ever- 
 lasting righteousness of God, — in a word, in- 
 stead of the character of God being lighted \\p 
 to the eye of the sinner, by the fire of his own 
 indignation, let it through the demonstration 
 of the Spirit be illustrated, and shone upon, by 
 
SERMON XI. 259 
 
 the mild, but peaceful light of the Sun of right- 
 eousness, and then may the sinner look in 
 peace, and safety, on the manifested character 
 of the Godhead. Dehvered from the burden of 
 his fears, he may now open his whole heart to 
 the influences of affection. And that love of 
 moral esteem, which before the entrance of the 
 faith of the gospel, the sense of condemnation 
 was sure to scare away, is now free to take its 
 place beside the love of gratitude, and to arise 
 along with it, in the offering of one spiritual 
 sacrifice to a reconciled Father. 
 
 Thus, then, it would appear, that the love of 
 moral esteem is in every way as much posterior, 
 and subordinate to faith, as is the love of grati- 
 tude. That we may be able to love God, either 
 according to the one or the other of its modifi- 
 cations, we must/r5^ know that God loved us. 
 We cannot harbour this affection in any one shape 
 whatever, so long as there is the suspicion, and 
 the dread of a yet unsettled controversy be- 
 tween us and God. Peace with our offended 
 Lawgiver, is not the fruit of our love, but of our 
 faith; — and faith if it be a reality, and not a 
 semblance, worketh by love. We have peace 
 with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. — 
 And we love much when we know, and believe, 
 that our sins are forgiven us. 
 
 God did not wait for any returning affection 
 on the part of a guilty world, ere he felt an af- 
 fection for it himself At that period when he 
 
260 SERMON XL 
 
 so loved the world, as to send his only begotten 
 Son into it, — did it exhibit the spectacle of an 
 immense prison-house of depravity. Among 
 the men of it, there was friendship one for ano- 
 ther, but there was one unalleviated character 
 of enmity against God. . Measuring themselves 
 by themselves, there was often a high mutual 
 esteem for such accomplishments, as were in 
 demand for the good of society ; — but that 
 which i« highly esteemed among men, is in 
 God's sight an abomination ; and when brought 
 to the measure of that universal righteousness 
 which forms the standard and rule of Heaven's 
 government, was it found that our species, had 
 through all its generations broken off from their 
 aliedance, and stood at as wide a distance from 
 the obedient, and unfallen creation, as does a 
 colony of convicts, from the country which has 
 cast them out of its borders. And it was at 
 such a time, when the world liked not to retain 
 God in their knowledge, — when all flesh had 
 corrupted their ways, — when there was none 
 seeking after God, — when there was not the 
 thought, or the wish, of a movement to him back 
 again, that he looked with pity on our fallen 
 race, and in the I'ulness of time, sent his Son 
 into the world to seek and to save us. 
 
 And the same is true of every individual to 
 whom the overtures of reconciliation are pro- 
 posed. God does not wait for any change of 
 affection in our heart, ere we accept of pardon 
 
SERMON XL 261 
 
 at his hands. But he asks one and all of us 
 now to accept of pardon, and to submit our 
 heart and character to the influences of that 
 graee which he is ready to bestow upon us. In 
 the gospel he proclaims a pardon ready made for 
 you, a deed of amnesty which he is even now 
 stretching out for your acceptance, a prevent- 
 ing offer of mercy, of which if you believe the 
 reality, you will feel that he is your friend, and 
 in which feeling you will not be disappointed. 
 He does not expect from you the love of grati- 
 tude, till you have known, and believed the 
 great things that he hath done for you. But 
 he expects from you the offering of an homage 
 to his truth. He does not expect from you 
 the love of moral esteem, till, released from the 
 terror of having him for your enemy, you may 
 contemplate with all the tranquil calmness of 
 conscious safety, the glories and the graces of 
 his manifested character. But he expects from 
 you faith in his declaration, that he is not your 
 enemy, — that he has no pleasure in your death, 
 — that in Christ he is beseeching you to be re- 
 conciled, — and stretching out to you the arms 
 of invitation. 
 
 The first matter on hand, then, between God 
 and sinners, in the work of making reconcilia- 
 tion, is, that they believe in him. It is, that the 
 tidings of great joy shall fall upon them with 
 credit, and acceptance. It is, that they count 
 the sayings of the word of this life to be faith- 
 
262 SERMON XL 
 
 ful sayings. It is, that they put faith in the re- 
 cord which God hath given of his Son, which 
 if they do, they will believe that God hath 
 given them eternal life, and that this life is in his 
 Son. 
 
 There is a certain speculation about the dis- 
 interested love of God, which has served to 
 darken and to embarrass this process. It has 
 cast an unmerited stiorma on the love of grati- 
 tude. But its worst effect, by far, is, that it has 
 impeded the freeness of the overtures of the 
 gospel. It has perplexed the outset of many an 
 enquirer. It has made him search in his own 
 mind for the evidences of an affection, which 
 he never can meet with, till he embrace the 
 offers, and rely upon the promises of the New 
 Testament. It has deposed faith from that post 
 of presiding supremacy which belongs to it, 
 and shifted from its place that great principle 
 on which both the love of gratitude, and the 
 love of moral esteem are suspended. 
 
 Let us cease to wonder, then, why faith oc- 
 cupies so much the station of a preliminary in 
 the New Testament. It is the great starting- 
 point, as it were, of Christian discipleship. Grant 
 but this principle, and love, with all the vi- 
 gour, and all the alacrity which it gives to obe- 
 dience, will emerge from its operation. There 
 is no other way, in fact, of charming love into 
 existence ; and the gratitude which devotes me 
 to the service of a reconciled God, and the love 
 
SERMON XL 263 
 
 of his character, which makes me meet for the 
 enjoyment of him in heaven, can only arise in 
 my bosom after I have believed. 
 
 Let this consideration shut you up unto the 
 faith. Let it exalt, in your estimation, the 
 mighty importance of a principle, without which 
 there can neither be any sanctification here, nor 
 any salvation hereafter. Think it not enough 
 that you import it into your mind as a bare ex- 
 istence. Know what it is to put it into habitual 
 exercise, to dwell upon the truths which it em- 
 braces, and to submit, in feeling and practice, 
 to their genuine operation. This is the only 
 way in which you can ever live a life of faith 
 on the Son of God, — or live by the power of a 
 world to come, — or keep yourselves in the love 
 of God, seeing that it is only when you know 
 and believe that God first loved you, that you 
 can be made to love him. 
 
 In the progress of these observations, a few 
 thoughts have occurred, which we trust may 
 be deemed of sufficient importance to be brought 
 forward, — and which we bring forward now, as 
 supplementary to the whole argument. 
 
 It will have been remarked, that we do not 
 consider man as altogether incapable of the love 
 of moral esteem towards any being whatever. 
 There are certain virtues of character which do 
 
264 SERMON XL 
 
 call forth the admiration and the tenderness, even 
 of our diseased nature, when thej reside some- 
 where else than in the person of the Deity. 
 Let our depravity be what it may, it were in the 
 face of all observation to affirm, that man does 
 not love truth rather than falsehood, and compas- 
 sion rather than cruelty, in a fellow-man, — and 
 the interesting question comes to be, how is it 
 that these qualities appear to lose all the force 
 which naturally belongs to them, of attracting 
 our regard, so as to awaken no such sentiment 
 towards God, though they be exemplified by 
 him, in a degree that is infinite ? 
 
 It will help us, in part, to resolve this ques- 
 tion, if we conceive of our man of moral virtues, 
 that his very truth, and justice, and compassion, 
 lead him, in the defence of wronged or calumni- 
 ated innocence, to turn the whole force of his 
 indignation on the head of an oppressor ; and 
 then think of the feeling which will arise, of 
 consequence, in the heart of the latter. It will 
 be a feeling of hatred and antipathy. And yet 
 we do not see far into the secrecies of the hu- 
 man constitution, if we do not perceive, that, in 
 perfect consistency with this feeling of personal 
 dislike to the man of virtue, who is hostile to 
 him, there may exist, even in his vitiated soul, 
 the love of moral esteem toward virtue residing 
 in some other quarter, or exemplified by some 
 other individual. Instead of this virtue being 
 realized on the person of one who is an enemy 
 
SERMON XI. serf 
 
 to myself, let it be offered by descriptioti to my 
 notice, in the person of one who lives in a dis- 
 tant country, or who lived in a distant age, and 
 hi the thought of my particular adversary be not 
 offensively suggested to my mind by such a con- 
 templation, — and I, with all those depravities 
 which have provoked the resentment of my up- 
 right neighbour against me, and have called forth 
 in my heart a corresponding hatred towards him, 
 will offer the homage of my regard and reve- 
 rence towards the picture of moral excellence, 
 that is thus set before me. This may look an 
 anomalous exhibition of our nature ; but it cer- 
 tainly is not more so, than the well-known fact 
 of a slave proprietor, at one time wreaking his 
 caprice and his cruelty on the living men who 
 are around him, and at another weeping, in all 
 the softness of pathetic emotion, over the dis- 
 tresses of a fictitious narrative. Distress in one 
 quarter may move our pity. Distress in another 
 may be inflicted by our own hand, to glut our 
 vindictive propensities. Worth, in the person 
 of one who is indifferent, and still more of one 
 who is friendly, may call forth our warm and 
 honest acknowledgments. Worth, in the per- 
 son of another, the very principles of whose 
 character have moved him to irritate our pride, 
 or to wound our selfishness, may turn him into 
 the object of our most passionate, determined^ 
 and unrelenting hostility. 
 
 34 
 
%6e SERMOxN XL 
 
 And thus it is, that I may have a natural taste 
 for several of the virtues which enter into the 
 Godhead, and, at the same time, may have a 
 hatred towards the person of the Godhead. — 
 This natural ta&te may be regarded by some, as 
 a predisposing element in my heart towards the 
 love of God ; but so long as I view him armed 
 in righteousness to destroy me, will this as ef- 
 fectually repress the embryo affection, as if still 
 it were fast slumbering in the depths of nonen- 
 tity. It is willingly admitted, that there are 
 certain partial sketches of the character of the 
 Deity, which, if offered to our notice, in a state 
 of separation from his anger against us the 
 children of disobedience, would kindle in our 
 bosoms a feeling of tasteful admiration. But 
 the dread,^^ or the suspicion of his anger absorbs 
 this feeling altogether ; and however much we 
 may bear the semblance of love for his charac- 
 ter, when we look to certain traits of it in a 
 detached and broken exhibition, — ^yet this i& 
 perfectly consistent with the fact, that the natu- 
 ral mind hates the person of the Deity, — that 
 the natural mind is enmity against God. And 
 this ought to convince us, that even though 
 there should be predisposing elements of love 
 to him for his worth, it is still indispensable, in 
 order to change our hatred into affection, that 
 we should look upon God as having ceased 
 from his anger, or that we should see him ar- 
 rayed in all the tenderness of offered and invit- 
 
SERMON XL 267 
 
 ing friendship. There is a spell by which thes^ 
 ;€lements are fastened, and which can never be 
 done away, till God woo me to friendship and 
 confidence^ by an exhibition of good will. Faith 
 in the cross of Christ, is the primary step of this 
 approximation. To call for a disinterested af- 
 fection towards God, from one who looks upon 
 God as an adversary, and that even though 
 there should be in his bosom the undeveloped 
 seeds of regard to the worth or character of the 
 Supreme, is to make a demand on a sentient 
 being, which, by his very constitution, he is un- 
 able to meet or to satisfy. And is not this de- 
 mand still more preposterous, when it comes 
 from a quarter where the depravity of man is 
 held to be so entire, that not one latent or pre- 
 disposing element towards the love of God is 
 ascribed to him ? Is it not a still vainer expec- 
 tation to think, in such hopeless circumstances 
 as these, that ere man seizes the gift of redemp- 
 tion, he shall import into his character the grace 
 of a pure and spiritual affection ; that with the 
 terror of his bosom yet unpacified, and the 
 countenance of God upon him as unrelenting as 
 ever, there shall arise, in the midst of all this 
 agitation, a love to that Being, the very thought 
 of whom brings a sense of insecurity along with 
 it; or that a guilty creature, who, even if he 
 had in a state of dormancy within him the prin- 
 ciples of moral regard to the Divinity, could 
 not, jonder the burden of wrath still unappeased' 
 
26i^ SERMON XL 
 
 charm these principles, out of the state of theiV 
 inaction, — that he, even were he utterly desti- 
 tute of these principles, should be able, under 
 this burden, to charm them out of the state of 
 non-existence ? 
 
 And this, by the way, may serve to show the 
 whole amountof that tasteful sentimentalism, in 
 virtue of which, a transient but treacherous and 
 hollow regard towards the Divinity, may be de- 
 tected in the hearts of those who nauseate the 
 whole spirit and contents of the gospel. They 
 admit into their contemplation only as much of 
 the character of God, as may serve to make out 
 a tender or an engaging exhibition of him. 
 They may leave entire the ground-work of his 
 natural attributes; but, in every survey they 
 take of the moral complexion of the Godhead, 
 they refuse to look to all his moral attributes 
 put together, and only fasten their regard upon 
 one of them, even the attribute of indulgence. 
 They cannot endure the view of his whole char- 
 acter ; and should this view ever intrude itself, it 
 puts to flight all the pathos and elegance of mere 
 natural piety. Truth, as directed against them- 
 selves; Holiness, as refusing to dwell in peace- 
 fuler approving fellowship with themselves ; Jus- 
 tice, as committed to a sentence of severe and in- 
 flexible retribution upon themselves, — all these 
 are out of their contemplation at that moment, 
 Avhen the votaries of a poetical theism feel to- 
 wards their imagined deity an evanescent glow 
 
&ERMON XI. 269 
 
 of affection or reverence. But truth and con- 
 science are ever meddling with this enjoyment ; 
 and piety resting on so frail and partial a foun- 
 dation, never can attain an habitual ascendencv 
 over the character; and what at the best is fic- 
 titious, does not, and ought not, to have more 
 than a rare and a little hour of emotion given to 
 it ; and this may explain how it is, that with the 
 very same individual, there may be both an oc- 
 casional recurrence of devotional feeling, and a 
 life of rooted and practical ungodliness. An illu- 
 sory representation of God will no more draw 
 away our affections from the world, or engage 
 us in the solid and experimental business of 
 obedience to its Maker, than the flippancy of a 
 novel will practically influence the habits of na- 
 ture, or of society. And thus it is, that the re- 
 ligion which is apart from Christianity, falls as 
 far short of true religion, as the humanity we 
 have just quoted, falls short of true humanity. 
 
 But to return.. We have already said, that 
 even though there did exist in the heart of man 
 a native regard to certain ingredients of worth 
 in the character of the Divinity, a previous ex- 
 hibition of good will is still essential, that the 
 person of the Divinity may be endeared to 
 him. And the argument for such a priority, 
 becomes much stronger, when it is made out, 
 on a farther attention to this matter, that there 
 is^ in fact, no such native or predisposing re- 
 gard. For, though it be true, that there arc 
 
270 SERMON XL 
 
 certain moral virtues, which, when reahzcd wpon 
 man, draw towards them the love and the re- 
 verence even of our depraved nature, and which, 
 when heightened into perfection upon God, 
 should therefore, it might be conceived, obtain 
 from nature, if placed in favourable circumstan- 
 ces, the homage of a love still more tender, and 
 of a reverence still more profound ; — yet there 
 is one great and comprehensive quality by which 
 all the moral attributes of the Godhead are per- 
 vaded, and for which, we can detect no native 
 and no kindred principle of attachment what- 
 ever, in the constitution of our species. We 
 allude to the holiness of the Godhead. Were 
 we asked to define this holiness, we should feel 
 that we were not giving to the term its full sig- 
 nificancy, by saying, that it merely consisted in 
 the absolute perfection of all the moral virtues 
 of the Divinity. It is a term, which, in the 
 appropriate force of it, denotes contrast or se- 
 paration. It was for this reason assigned to 
 the vessels of the temple, and just because they 
 were set apart from common use. To have 
 made them common, would have been to make 
 them unclean, or unholy. To have turned them 
 to any ordinary or household purposes, would 
 have been to inflict upon them such a touch of 
 profanation, that their holiviess would have de- 
 parted from them. Had there been a full and 
 perfect sense of God in every house, and in every 
 heart, — had the presence of the Divinity been 
 
SERMON XI. 271 
 
 equally felt by his creatures at all times, and in 
 all places,— -had the will of the Divinity held as 
 presiding an influence over the every-day doings, 
 as over the services of the solemn and extraor- 
 dinary occasion,— then there might have been 
 no temple, and no ritual observation, and, of con- 
 sequence, no room for such an application of 
 the term hohness. A thing is not consecrated 
 by being set apart from that which is equally 
 pure and sacred with itself; and did there obtain 
 an equal and universal purity throughout the 
 whole system of nature, there could be no need 
 for separation. In these circumstances there 
 would have been no contrast, and, therefore, no 
 demand for such a term as that of holiness. 
 
 This may serve to illustrate the force and im- 
 port of the term, as applied to the character of 
 God. It does not signify the moral perfection 
 of his character, taken absolutely. It signifies 
 this perfection in relation to its opposite. When 
 we look to the holiness of the divine character, 
 we look to it in its aspect of lofty separation 
 from all that can either taint or debase it. We 
 look to its irreconcilable variance with sin. We 
 look to the inaccessible height at which it 
 stands above all the possible acquirements of 
 created nature, insomuch, that he who possesses 
 it, charges even his angels with folly: and when 
 created nature is not only imperfect, but sinful, 
 we tlien look to the recoil of the Divinity from 
 all contact, and from all approximation. We 
 
272 SERMON Xl 
 
 think of the purer eyes than can behold iniquity^ 
 and of the presence so sacred, that evil cannot 
 dwell with it. We think of that sanctuary into 
 which there cannot enter any thing that defileth, 
 or that maketh a lie, — a sanctuary guarded by 
 all the jealousies of the Divine nature^ and so 
 repugnant to the approach of pollution^ that if 
 it offer to draw nigh, the fire of a consuming 
 indignation will either check, or will destroy it. 
 Now, were the whole severity of this attri- 
 bute directed against the violations of social 
 kindness, and social equity, we would admit 
 that there was a ready coalescence with it in 
 the principles of our natural constitution. But 
 when it searches into the character of the most 
 urgent affections of nature, and there detects 
 the very essence of sinfulness ; — when it sits in 
 judgment over the preference given by every 
 child of Adam to the creature, rather than the 
 Creator, and holds this in righteous abomination ; 
 — when it looks through a society of human be- 
 ings, and pronounces, in spite of all the justice 
 by which its interests are guarded, and of all 
 the humanity by which its ills are softened, or 
 done away, that, w holly given over to the en- 
 joyment of the world, it is wholly immersed in 
 the guilt of an idolatry, by which the jealousies 
 of the supreme and spiritual God are provoked 
 to the uttermost; — when holiness is thus seen, 
 not merely in its antipathy to crime, which is 
 occasional and rare, but in its antipathy to an 
 
SERMON XL 273 
 
 affection, the rooted obstinacy of which, and 
 the engrossing power of which, arc univer- 
 sal, — then so far from the coalescence uf ap- 
 provhig nature, do we behold the revolt of 
 pained and irritated nature. It no more fol- 
 lows, because man loathes the cruelty or the in- 
 justice of his fellow-man, that he therefore car- 
 ries in his heart a predisposing element of re- 
 gard for the essential character of God, than it 
 follows, because a man would sicken with dis- 
 gust at the atrocities of a prison-house, that he 
 therefore feels his element and his joy to be in 
 the humble piety of a conventicle. A high- 
 minded and an honourable merchant finds room 
 in his bosom for the love both of truth and of 
 the world. Yet the one is an attribute of God, 
 while the love of the other is opposite to the 
 love of God. " If any man love the world," 
 says an aposde, " the love of the Father is not 
 in him." He may like the transcript of truth, 
 and of many other virtues on the face of the 
 creature, but he likes not the Creator. He can 
 gaze, and that even with rapture, on the partial 
 and imperfect sketches of the unfinished copy, 
 but he shrinks from the view of the entire ori- 
 ginal. He can hold the intercourse of wistful 
 thoughts, and fervent aspiration, with the 
 absent object of his earthly regard, but he has 
 neither taste nor capacity for communion with 
 his Father in heaven. " Holy, holy, holy, Lord 
 God, Almighty," is the anthem of the celes- 
 
 55 
 
274 SERMON XL 
 
 tial, but theirs is a delight which he cannot 
 share in. And as surely as his body would 
 need to be transformed, ere it could cease to 
 have pain amid the agonies of hell, — so surely 
 would his mind need to be transformed, ere it 
 ceased to feel a confinement and an irksomeness 
 amid the halleluiahs of paradise. 
 
 Even th ugh man, then, had in his heart a 
 nascent affection for the character of God, this 
 would be restrained from passing onwards to an 
 affection for his person, by a sense of guilt, 
 and the consequent dread of God as an enemy. 
 Nor could the love of God be inserted in his 
 bosom, till by faith in the expiation of the gos- 
 pel, that which letteth was taken out of the 
 way. But still more, if, in conformity to our 
 present argument, there be no such nascent 
 affection for the Divine character, is it hopeless 
 to attempt the establishment of love antece- 
 dently to belief, or that attachment should take 
 possession of the heart, ere fear takes its depar- 
 ture away from it. Even if by the working of 
 some power unknown in the human constitution, 
 or by some effort, the success of which has ne- 
 ver yet, in a single instance, been experienced, 
 there could be made to arise in the soul, the 
 love of holiness, previous to the act of trusting 
 in the offered Saviour, — a terror at God, which, 
 in the absence of this trust, is the instinctive 
 and universal feeling of nature, would just as 
 effectually repress the love of holiness, as it 
 
SERMON XL 275 
 
 does the love of truth, or of compassion, or of 
 justice, from carrying us onwards to a regard for 
 the person of the Godhead. To put the love of 
 God's character into a heart not yet brought in- 
 to enlargement by the faith of the gospel, would 
 just be to put it into a prison-hold, and there to 
 chain it down to a fruitlessness and inactivity, 
 w^here it would be wholly unproductive of love 
 to God himself Confidence must take the pre- 
 cedency of this love, even in a bosom already 
 furnished with the preparatory elements of of- 
 fection; and how much more essential then 
 is it, that it should take the precedency in a 
 bosom, where these elements are altogether 
 wanting ? Faith is thus more strongly evinced 
 to be a thing of prior and indispensable ne- 
 cessity. Without it, even the seed of any pre- 
 cious affection for the Godhead, stifled in em- 
 bryo, would not blow into luxuriance. And if 
 our nature be such a wilderness that no seed is 
 there,— if the thing w anted be the germination 
 of a new principle, and not the development of 
 an old, — if it be by a creative and not by a 
 mere fostering process, that we are transformed 
 into a meetness for heaven, — if the agency that 
 is made to bear upon the human soul, must 
 have a power to regenerate as well as to repair, 
 — and if the promise of this agency be given 
 only to those who believe, then let us no more 
 linger, or be bewildered, in that abyss of help- 
 lessness from which faith alone can extricate the 
 
276 SERMON Xf. 
 
 enquirer, — let us no longer arrest the eye of 
 confidence from that demonstration of good will, 
 which is held out to the most widely alienated 
 of sinners, — but hasten to place ourselves, even 
 now, on that foundation of trust, where alone 
 we are made the w^orkmanship of God in Christ 
 Jesus, and the love of God is shed abroad in our 
 hearts by the Holy Ghost. t 
 
 '' Destroy this temple," says the Saviour, " and 
 I will raise it up again in three days." It is there 
 alone that w^e can behold the beauty of the Lord 
 and be safe* This place of greatest security, is 
 also the place of chiefest glory. It is when ad- 
 mitted into this greater and more perfect taber- 
 nacle, that we can look on majesty without ter- 
 ror, and on holiness without an overwhelming 
 sense of condemnation. The sinner encircled in 
 mercy look in tranquil contemplation on all that 
 is awful and venerable in the character of the 
 Godhead, — and never do truth, and righteous- 
 ness, and purity, appear in loftier exhibition be- 
 fore him, than when, withheld from his own 
 person, he sees the whole burden of their aveng- 
 ing laid upon the head of the great Sacrifice. 
 
 " One thing have I desired of the Lord," says 
 the Psalmist; " that I may dwell in the courts 
 of the Lord, all the days of my life, to behold 
 the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his 
 temple." It is not till we are within the por- 
 tals of the place of refuge that this desire can 
 obtain its fulfilment. Selfishness may have 
 
SERMON XL 277 
 
 originated the movemt?nt which took us there. 
 The fear of the coming wrath may have lent 
 celerity to our footsteps. A joyful sense of de- 
 liverance may have been felt, ere the glories of 
 the divine character were seen in bright and 
 convincing manifestation. The love of grati- 
 tude may have kindled within us, — and, with the 
 Psalmist, we may have to seek, and to enquire, 
 and to have daily exercise and meditation, ere 
 the love of moral esteem has attained the place 
 of ascendency which b elongs to it. Neverthe- 
 less, the chief end of man is to glorify God, and 
 to enjoy him for ever. This is the real destina- 
 tion of every individual who is redeemed from 
 among men. This should be the main object of 
 all his prayers, and all his preparations. It is 
 this which fits him for the company of heaven ; 
 and unless there be a growing taste for God, 
 in the glories of his excellency, — for God, in the 
 beauties of his holiness, — there is no ripening, 
 and no perfecting, for the mansions of immor- 
 tality. Though you have to combat, then, with 
 the sluggishness of sense, and with the real 
 aversion of nature to every spiritual exercise, 
 you must attempt, and strenuously cultivate, the 
 habit of communion with God. And as no 
 man knoweth the Father save the Son reveal 
 him, and as it is by the Spirit that Christ gives 
 light to those who believe in him ; — for the at- 
 tainment of this great moral and spiritual ac- 
 complishment, do what the Apostle directs you. 
 
278 SERMON XL 
 
 when he says, " Keep yourselves in' the love of 
 God, by praying in the Holy Ghost." Your first 
 endeavours may be feeble, and fatiguing, and fruit- 
 less. But God will not despise the day of small 
 things, — nor will the light of his countenance be 
 always withheld from those who aspire after it, 
 — nor will the soul that thirsts after God, be 
 left for ever unsatisfied, — and the life and peace 
 of being spiritually minded, will come in rich 
 experience to his feelings, — and the whole habit 
 of his tastes and enjoyments, will be in diame- 
 tric opposition to that of the children of the 
 world, — God being the habitation to which he 
 resorts continually, — God being the strength 
 of his heart, and his portion for evermore. 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE. 
 
 John v. 24. 
 •* But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in. you."' 
 
 When it is said, in a former verse of the gos- 
 pel, that Jesus knew what was in man, we feel, 
 that it is a tribute of acknowledgment, ren- 
 dered to his superior insight, into the secrecies 
 of our constitution. It was not the mere fa- 
 culty of perceiving what lay before him, that 
 was ascribed to him by the Evangelist. It 
 was the faculty of perceiving what lay dis- 
 guised under a semblance, that would have 
 imposed on the understanding of other men. It 
 was the faculty of detecting. It was a dis- 
 cerning of the spirit, and that not through 
 the transparency of such unequivocal symp- 
 toms, as brought its character clearly home to 
 the view of the observer. But it was a dis- 
 cerning of the spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, 
 to an ordinary spectator, was a thick and im- 
 penetrable hiding place. It was a discovery 
 
280 SERMON XII. 
 
 there of the real posture and habitude of the 
 soul. It was a searching of it out, through all 
 the recesses of duplicity, winding and counter- 
 wiijding in such a way, as to elude altogether 
 the eye of common acquaintanceship. It was 
 the assigning to it of one attribute, at the time 
 when it wore the guise of another attribute, — of 
 utter antipathy to the nature and design of his 
 mission, at the very time that multitudes were 
 drawn around him, by the fame of his mira- 
 cles, — of utter indifference about God, at the 
 very time that they zealously asserted the sanc- 
 tity of his sabbaths, and resented as blasphe- 
 mous, whatever they felt to be an usurpation of 
 the greatness which belonged to him only. 
 
 It was in the exercise of this faculty, that 
 Jesus came forward with the utterance of our 
 text. The Jews, by whom he was surrounded, 
 had charged him with the guilt of profanation, 
 and sought even to avenge it by his death, be- 
 cause he had healed a man on the sabbath day. 
 And their desire of vengeance was still more 
 inflamed, by what they understood to be an as- 
 sertion, on his part, of equality with God. And 
 yet, under all this appearance, and even with all 
 this reality of a zeal about God, did he who 
 knew what was in man, pronounce of these his 
 enemies, that the love of God was not in them. 
 I know you, says he, — as if at this instant he had 
 put forth a stretch of penetration, in order to find 
 his way through all the sounds of godliness which 
 
SERMON XII. 281 
 
 he heard, and through all the symptoms of god- 
 liness which he saw,—! know that there does not 
 exist within you that principle, which hnks to 
 God, the whole of God's obedient creation,— 
 I know that you do not love him, and that, 
 therefore, you are utterly in want of that affec- 
 tion, which hes at the root of all real, and of all 
 acceptable godliness. 
 
 It is mortifying to the man who possesses 
 many accompHshments of character, to be told, 
 that the greatest and most essential accom- 
 pHshment of a moral being, is that of which he 
 has no share, — that the principle on which we 
 expatiated in our last discourses, does not, in 
 any of its varieties, belong to him, — that, want- 
 ing it, he wants not merely obedience to the 
 first and the greatest commandment, which is 
 the love of God, but he wants what may be 
 called the impregnating quality of all accepta- 
 ble obedience whatever, — the spirit which ought 
 to animate the performance of every other 
 commandment, and without which, the most la- 
 borious conformity to the law of Heaven, may 
 do no more than impress upon his person the 
 cold and lifeless image of loyalty, while in his 
 mind there is not one of its essential attributes. 
 We know not a more useful exercise than 
 that of carrying round this conviction, amongst 
 all the classes and conditions of humanity. In 
 the days of our Saviour, the pride of the Pha- 
 risees stood opposed to such a demonstration ; 
 
 m 
 
28^2 SERMON Xll. 
 
 and in our own days too, there are certain pre- 
 tensions of worth, and of excellence, which 
 must be disposted, ere we can hope to obtain 
 admittance for the humiliating^ doctrine of the 
 gospel. For this gospel, it must be observed, 
 proceeds upon the basis, not of a partial, but 
 of an entire and universal depravity, among 
 the men of the world. It assimilates all the 
 varieties of the human character into one com- 
 mon condition of guilt, and need, and helpless- 
 ness. It presumes the existence of such a 
 moral disease in every son and daughter of 
 Adam, as renders the application of the same 
 moral remedy indispensable to them all. The 
 formalists of Judea did not like to be thus 
 grouped with publicans and harlots, under one 
 description of sinfulness. Nor do men of taste, 
 and feeling, and graceful morality, in our pre- 
 sent day, readily understand how they should 
 require the same kind of treatment, in the work 
 of preparing them for immortality, with the 
 most glaringly profligate and unrighteous of 
 their neighbourhood. They look to the ostensi- 
 ble marks of distinction between themselves and 
 others ; — and what wider distinction, they think, 
 can possibly be assigned, than that which ob- 
 tains between the upright, or the kind-hearted, 
 on the one hand, and the ungenerous, or dishon- 
 est, on the other? Now, what we propose, in the 
 following discourse, is to lead them to look a 
 little farther,— and then they will see at least one 
 
SERMON XII. 283 
 
 point of similarity between these two classes, the 
 want of one common ingredient with both, and 
 which attaches to each of them a great moral 
 defect, that can only be repaired by one and the 
 same application. 
 
 It is well when we can find out an accordan- 
 cy between the actual exhibition of human na- 
 ture on the field of experience, and the repre- 
 sentation that is given of this nature on the 
 field of revelation. Now, the Bible every where 
 groups the individuals of our species, into two 
 general and distinct classes, and assigns to each 
 of them its appropriate designation. It tells us 
 of the vessels of wrath, and of the vessels of mer- 
 cy-; of the travellers on a narrow path, and on a 
 broad way; of the children of this world, and the 
 children of light; and, lastly, of men who are car- 
 nally minded, and men who are spiritually mind- 
 ed. It employs these terms in a meaning so 
 extensive, that by each couplet of them it em- 
 braces all individuals. There is no separate 
 number of persons, forming of themselves a neu- 
 tral class, and standing without the limits of the 
 two others. And were it possible to conceive, 
 that human nature, as it exists at present in the 
 world, were laid in a map before us, you would 
 see no intermediate ground between the two 
 classes which are thus contrasted in the Bible, 
 — but these thrown into two distinct regions, 
 with one clear and vigorous line of demarcatioH 
 between them. 
 
284 SERMON XII. 
 
 We often read of this line, and we often read 
 of the transition from the one to the other side 
 of it. But there is no trace of any middle de- 
 partment to be met with in the New Testan ent. 
 The alternative has only two terms, and ours must 
 be the one or the other of them. And as surely 
 as a day is coming, when all the men of our as- 
 sembled world shall be found on the right or 
 on the left hand of the throne of judgment — so 
 surely do the carnal and the spiritual regions of 
 human nature, stand apart from each other; and 
 all the men who are now living on the surface 
 of the world, are to be found on the right, or on 
 the wrong side, of the line of demarcation. 
 
 We cannot conceive, then, a question of 
 mightier interest, than the situation of this line, 
 — a line which takes its own steady and un- 
 faultering way through the thousand varieties 
 of character that exist in the world ; and which 
 reduces them all to two great, and awfully im- 
 portant divisions. It marks off one part of the 
 species froin the other. We are quite aware 
 that the terms which are employed to charac- 
 terize the two sets are extremely unfashionable ; 
 and, what is more, are painfully offensive to m^- 
 ny a mind, whose taste, and whose habits, have 
 not yet been brought under the overpowering 
 controul of God's own message, expressed in 
 God's own language. They are such terms as 
 would be rejected with a positive sensation of 
 disgust by many a moralist, and wowld be 
 
SERMON XII. 285 
 
 thought by many more, to impart the blemish of 
 a most hideous deformity, to his eloquent and 
 philosophical pages. It is curious here to ob- 
 serve how much the Maker of the human mind, 
 and the mere observer of the human mind, 
 differ in their views and representations of tlie 
 same object. But when told, on the highest of 
 all authority, that to be carnally minded is death, 
 and to be spiritually minded is life and peace, 
 we are compelled to acknowledge with a feeling 
 of earnestness, greater than mere curiosity can 
 inspire, that the application of these terms, is a 
 question of all others the most deeply affecting 
 to the fears, and the wishes of humanity. 
 
 In the prosecution of this question, let me 
 attempt to bring a succession of characters be- 
 fore you, most of which must have met your 
 own distinct and famiHar observation ; and ot 
 which, while exceedingly various in their com- 
 plexion, we hope to succeed in convincing you, 
 that the love of God, at least, is not in them. — 
 If this can be made out against them, it may be 
 considered as experimentally fixing to which of 
 the two great divisions of humanity they be- 
 long. All who love God, may have boldness, 
 when they think of the day of judgment, be- 
 cause, like unto God, who himself is love, they 
 will be pronounced meet for the enjoyment, 
 and the fellowship of him through eternity. — 
 And they who want this affection when they 
 die shall be turned into hell. They shall be 
 
286 SERMON XII. 
 
 found to possess that carnal mind which is 
 enmity against God. So that upon the single 
 point of whether they possess this love or not, 
 hinges the question which I have just now 
 started, — a question surely which it were better 
 for every man to decide at the bar of conscience 
 now, ere it comes under the review of that 
 dread tribunal which is to award to him hi& 
 everlasting habitation. 
 
 I. Let us first offer to your notice, a man 
 living in the grossness of animal indulgence, — a 
 man, the field of whose enjoyments is altogether 
 sensual, — and who, therefore, in addition to the 
 charge he brings down upon himself, of direct- 
 ly violating the law of God, is regarded by the 
 admirers of what is tasteful and refined in the 
 human character, as a loathsome object of con- 
 templation. There is something more here 
 than mere wickedness of character to excite 
 the regret or detestation of the godly. There 
 is sordidness of character to excite the dis- 
 gust of the elegant. And let us just add one 
 feature more to this portrait of deformity. Let 
 us suppose the man in question to have so 
 abandoned himself to the impulses of selfishness, 
 that no feeling and no principle whatever, re- 
 strains him from yielding to its temptations, — 
 that to obtain the gratification he is in quest of, 
 he can violate all the decencies, and bid away 
 from him all the tendernesses of our common 
 humanity, — that he has the hardihood to set the 
 
SERMON XII. 287 
 
 terrors of the civil law at defiance, — and that, 
 for the money which ministers to every earthly 
 appetite, he can even go so far, as to steel his 
 heart against the atrocity of a murder. When 
 we have thus set before you, the picture of one 
 feasting on the prey of his inhuman robberies, 
 we have surely brought our description as far 
 down in the scale of character, as it can well be 
 carried. And we have done so, on purpose 
 that you may be at no loss to assign the place 
 which belongs to him. It were a monstrous 
 supposition altogether, that either the love of 
 gratitude, or the love of moral esteem for the 
 Deity, were to be found in the bosom of such a 
 man. He then, of all others, is not spiritual but 
 carnal; nor do we anticipate a single dissenting 
 voice when we say, that whatever be the doubts 
 and the delusions which may prevail about men 
 of another aspect, the man whose habits and 
 pursuits have now been sketched to you, stands 
 on the wrong side of the line of demarcation. 
 
 We are far from saying, that a man of such a 
 character as this is of frequent occurrence in 
 society. We merely set him up as a kind of 
 starting-post, for the future train of our argu- 
 ment. It is a mighty advantage, in every dis- 
 cussion, to have a clear and undisputed outset, 
 — and we trust, that, if thus far we have kept 
 cordially by the side of each other, we shall not 
 cast out by the way, in the progress of our re- 
 maining observations. 
 
28S SERMON Xlf. 
 
 ir. Let us now proceed, then, to detach one 
 offensive feature from the character of him, 
 whom we have thus set before you, as a com- 
 pound of many abominations. Let us leave 
 entire all his dishonesty, and all his devotedness 
 to the pleasures of sense, but soften and trans- 
 form his heart to such a degree, that he would 
 recoil from the perpetration of a murder. This 
 is a different portrait from the one which we 
 formerly exhibited. There is in it an instinc- 
 tive horror at an act of violence, which did not 
 belong to the other; — and the question we have 
 now to put, is, Has the man who owns this im- 
 proved representation, become, on this single 
 difference, a spiritual man ? We answer this 
 question by another. Is the difference that we 
 have now assigned to him, due to the love of 
 God, or to such a principle of loyal subjection 
 to his authority, as this love is sure to engen- 
 der? You will not call him spiritual from the 
 mere existence of a feeling which would rise 
 spontaneously in his heart, even though the 
 Father of spirits were never thought of We 
 appeal to your own consciousness of what pass- 
 es within you, if the heart do not experience 
 the movement of many a constitutional feeling, 
 altogether unaccompanied by any reference of 
 the mind, to the love, or to the character, or 
 even to the existence of God. Are you not 
 quite sensible, that though the idea of a God 
 lay in a state of dormancy for hours, and for 
 
SERMON XII. 289 
 
 <iays togfether, many of the relenlings of na- 
 ture would, in the meanwhile, remain with you ? 
 For the preservation and the order of society, 
 God has been kind enough to implant in the 
 bosom of man, many a natural predilection, and 
 many a natural horror, — of which he feels the 
 operation, and the people of his neighbour- 
 hood enjoy the advantage, at the very time that 
 one and all of them, unmindful of God, are walk- 
 ing in the counsel of their own hearts, and after 
 the sight of their own eyes. He has done the 
 same thing to the inferior animals. He has 
 endowed them with a principle of attachment 
 to their offspring, in virtue of which, they, 
 generally speaking, would recoil from the mur- 
 der of their young with as determined an ab- 
 horrence, as you would do from the murder of 
 a fellow-creature. You would not surely say 
 of the irrational instinct, that because amiable, 
 or useful, or pleasing to contemplate, there is 
 any thing spiritual in the impulse it communi- 
 cates. Then do not offer a violence both to 
 Scripture and philosophy, by confounding, in the 
 mind of man, principles which are distinct from 
 each other. Do not say, that he is spiritual, 
 merely because he is moving in obedience to 
 his constitutional tendencies. Do not say, that 
 he is not carnal, while all that he has done, or 
 abstained from doing, may be done or abstained 
 from, though he lived without God in the world. 
 And go not to infer, while the pleasures of sens^ 
 
 37 
 
290 SERMON XlL 
 
 are the idols of his every affection — that because 
 he would shudder to purchase them, at the ex- 
 pense of another's blood, he, on that single ac- 
 count, may be looked on as a spii'itual man, and 
 as standing on the right side of the line of de- 
 marcation. 
 
 III. All this may be looked upon, as too in*- 
 disputable for argument. And yet it is the 
 very principle which, if carried to its fair ex- 
 tent, and brought faithfully home to the con- 
 science, would serve to convince of ungodhness, 
 the vast majority of this world's generations. 
 If a natural recoil from murder, may be expe- 
 rienced by the bosom, in which there exists no 
 love to God, — why may not this natural recoil 
 be carried still farther, and yet the love of God 
 be just as absent from the bosom as before? 
 There are other dishonesties, of a far less out- 
 rageous character, than that by which you 
 would commit an act of depredation ; and other 
 cruelties far less enormous, than that by which 
 you would embrue your hand in another's blood, 
 — which still the generality of men would re- 
 volt from constitutionally, and that too, without 
 the movement of any affection for their God, or 
 even so much as any thought of him. We have 
 only to conceive the softening of a further 
 U'ansforraation, to take place on the man, with 
 whom we set out at the beginning of our argu- 
 ment; and he may thus become; like the man 
 
8ERM0N XII. 291 
 
 we read of in the parable, who took comfort to 
 himself in the security, that he had goods laid 
 up for many years, and at the same time is not 
 charged, either with violence, or dishonesty in 
 the acquirement of them. He is charged with 
 nothing, but a devoted attachment to wealth ; 
 and to the pleasures which that wealth can pur- 
 chase. And yet, what an awful reckoning did 
 he come under ! He seems to have just been 
 such a man, as we can be at no loss to meet 
 with every day in the range of our familiar ac- 
 quaintances, — enjoying themselves in easy and 
 comfortable abundance ; but at an obvious and 
 unquestionable distance from any thing that 
 can be called atrocity of character. There is 
 not one of them, perhaps, who would not recoil 
 from an act of barbarity ; and w ho would not 
 be moved with honest indignation, at the tale of 
 perfidy or of violence. They live in a placid 
 course of luxury, and good humour; and we are 
 far from charging them with any thing which 
 the world calls monstrous, — when we say, that 
 the Father of spirits is un minded, and unre- 
 garded by them, and that the good things of the 
 world are their gods. If it be a vain super- 
 fluity of argument to prove, that a man may 
 not be spiritual, and yet be endowed with such 
 a degree of natural tenderness, as to recoil from 
 the perpetration of a murder, — then it is equally 
 indisputable, that a man may not be spiritual, 
 though endowed with such a degree of natural 
 
292 .SERMON XIL 
 
 tenderness, as to recoil from many lesser acts of 
 cruelty, or injustice. In other words, he may 
 be a very fair every day character ; and if it be 
 so sure a principle, that a man may not be a 
 murderer, and yet be carnal, then let one and 
 all of you look well to your own security; for it 
 is the very principle which might be employed, 
 to shake the thousands, and tens of thousands of 
 ordinary men, out of the security in which they 
 have entrenched themselves. 
 
 IV. But to proceed in this work of transfor- 
 mation. Let us now conceive a still more ex- 
 quisite softening of affection and tenderness, to 
 be thrown over the whole of our imaginary 
 character. We thus make another step, and 
 another departure, from the original specimen. 
 By the first step, the mind is made to feel a 
 kind of revolting, at the atrocity of a murder ; 
 and the character ceases to be monstrous. By 
 the second, the mind is made to share in all 
 the common antipathies of our nature, to 
 what is cruel and unfeeling; and it is thus 
 wrought up to the average of character which 
 obtains in society. By the third step, the mind 
 is endowed with the warmer and more delicate 
 sympathies of our nature, and thus rises to a 
 more exalted place in the scale of character. 
 It becomes positively amiable. You look to 
 him, who owns all these graceful sensibilities, 
 even as the Saviour looked unto the young 
 man of the gospels, and, like the Saviour, yon 
 
SERMON XII. 295 
 
 love him. Who can, in fact, refrain from doing 
 homage to such a lovely exhibition of all that is 
 soothing in humanity ? and whether he be em- 
 ployed in mingling his tears, and his charities, 
 with the unfortunate, or in shedding a gentle 
 lustre over the retirement of his own family, 
 even orthodoxy herself, stern and unrelenting 
 as she is conceived to be, cannot find it in her 
 heart to frown upon him. But, feeling is one 
 thing, and truth is another; and when the 
 question is put. Do all these sensibilities, heigh- 
 tened and adorned as they are, on the upper 
 walks of society, constitute a spiritual man ? — 
 it is not by a sigh, or an aspiration of tender- 
 ness, that we are to answer it. We are put on 
 a cool exercise of the understanding; and we 
 cannot close it against the fact, that all these 
 feelings may exist apart from the love of God, 
 and apart from the religious principle, — that the 
 idea of a God may be expunged from the heart 
 of man, and yet that heart be still the seat of the 
 same constitutional impulses as ever, — that, in re- 
 ference to the realities of the unseen and spiritual 
 world, the mind may be an entire blank, and 
 there, at the same time, be room in it, for the 
 play of kindly and benevolent emotions. We 
 commit these truths to your own experience, and 
 if carried faithfully to the conscience, they may 
 chase away another of the delusions which en- 
 compass it. There is no feai' of me, for I have 
 a feeling heart, is a plea w hich they put a de- 
 
294 SERMON XII. 
 
 eisive end to. This feeling heart, if unaccom- 
 panied by any sense of God, is no better evi- 
 dence of a spiritual man, than is the circulation 
 of the blood. We are far from refusing it the 
 homage of our tenderness. We feel a love to 
 it, but we will not make a lie about it. We 
 can make no more of it, than Scripture and ex- 
 perience enable us to do. And, if it be true, 
 that a man's heart may be the habitual seat of 
 kind affections, while an affection for God is 
 habitually away from it, — if it be true, that no 
 man can be destitute of this affection, and at 
 the same time be a spiritual man, — if it be true, 
 that he who is not spiritual, is carnal, and that 
 the carnally-minded cannot inherit the king- 
 dom of God ; — then the necessity lies upon us : 
 he is still in the region and shadow of death ; 
 and if he refuse the arguments and invitations 
 of the gospel, calling him over to another region 
 than that which he now occupies, he must just 
 be numbered among those more beauteous 
 wrecks of our fallen nature, which are destined 
 to perish and be forgotten. 
 
 V. But let us go still farther. Let us sup- 
 pose the heart to be furnished, not merely with 
 the finest sensibilities of our nature, but with its 
 most upright and honourable principles. Let 
 us conceive a man whose pulse beats high with 
 the pride of integrity ; whose every word carries 
 security along with it ; -whose faithfulness in the 
 walks of business has stood the test of many 
 
SERMON XII. 2dd 
 
 fluctuations ; who, amid all the varieties of his 
 fortune, has nobly sustained the glories of an 
 untainted character ; and whom we see by the 
 salutations of the market-place, to be acknow- 
 ledged and revered by all, as the most respect- 
 able of the citizens. Now, which of the two 
 great regions of human character shall we make 
 him to occupy ? This question depends upon 
 another. May all this manly elevation of soul^ 
 and of sentiment, stand disunited in the same 
 heart, with the influence of the authority of 
 God, or with that love of God which is the 
 keeping of his commandments? The discerning 
 eye of Hume saw that it could ; and he tells us 
 that natural honesty of temper is a better se- 
 curity for the faithfulness of a man's doings, 
 than all the authority of religious principle 
 over him. We deny the assertion ; but the dis- 
 tinction between the two principles on which it 
 proceeds, is indisputable. There is a principle 
 of honour, apart in the human mind altogether, 
 from any reference to the realities of a spiritual 
 world. It varies in the intensity of its opera- 
 tion, with different individuals. It has the 
 chance of being more entire, when kept aloof 
 from the temptations of poverty ; and therefore 
 it is, that we more frequendy meet with it in the 
 upper and middling classes of hfe. And we 
 can conceive it so strong in its original influ- 
 ence, or so grateful to the possessor from the 
 elevating consciousness which goes along with 
 
296 SERMON XII. 
 
 it, or so nourished by the voice of an applauding 
 world, as to throw all the glories of a romantic 
 chivalry over the character of him, with whom 
 God is as much unihought of, as he is unseeen. 
 We are far from refusing our admiration. But 
 we are saying, that the Being who brought this 
 noble specimen of our nature into existence; 
 who fitted his heart for all its high and generous 
 emotions ; who threw a theatre around him, for 
 the display and exercise of his fine moral ac- 
 complishments ; who furnished each of his ad- 
 mirers with a heart to appreciate his worth, and 
 a voice to pour into his ear the flattering ex- 
 pression of it; — the Being whose hand upholds 
 and perpetuates the whole of this illustrious ex- 
 hibition, may all the while be forgotten, and un- 
 noticed as a thing of no consequence. We are 
 merely saying, that the man whose heart is oc- 
 cupied with a sentiment of honour, and is at 
 the same time unoccupied with a sense of Him, 
 who is the first and greatest of spiritual beings, 
 is not a spiritual man. But, if not spiritual, we 
 are told in the Bible, that there are only two 
 terms in the alternative, and he must be carnal. 
 — And the God whom he has disregarded in 
 time, will find, that in the praises and enjoy- 
 ments of time, he has gotten all his reward, and 
 that he owes him no recompense in eternity. 
 
 Wc appeal to the state of the public mind 
 some years ago, on the subject of Africa, as a 
 living exemplification of the whole argument. 
 
SERMON XII. 297 
 
 " Love thy neighbour as thyself," says the 
 Bible ; and this precept, coming with all the 
 force of its religious influence upon the hearts of 
 men, who carry their respects to the will of a spi- 
 ritual and unseen God, have urged them on, and 
 with noble effect, to the abolition of the dead- 
 liest mischief that was ever let loose upon the 
 species. And whether we look to the Quakers, 
 who originated the cause, or to him who pio- 
 neered the cause, or to him who plead the cause, 
 or to him who has impregnated with such a 
 moral charm, the atmosphere of his country, 
 that not a human creature can breathe of its air 
 without taking in the generous inspiration of 
 liberty along with it, — we cannot fail to observe, 
 that one and all of them speak the language, and 
 evince the tastes, and are not ashamed to own 
 their most entire and decided preference for the 
 objects of spiritual men. There is an evident 
 sense of religious duty, which gives the tone of 
 Christianity, and throws the aspect of sacredness 
 over the whole of their doings ; and the un- 
 baffled perseverance of the many years they had 
 to struggle with difficulties, and to spend in the 
 weariness of ever recurring disappointments, 
 bears striking proof to the unquenchable energy 
 of the Christian principle within them. But 
 who can deny the large and important contri- 
 butions which came in upon the cause from 
 other quarters ? We hold it quite consistent with 
 the truth of human nature, to aver, that in 
 
 38 
 
298 SERMON XII. 
 
 this enlightened country, other principles may 
 have lent their aid to the cause, and, apart from 
 Christianity altogether, may have sent a com- 
 manding influence into the hearts of some of its 
 ablest and most efficient supporters. There is 
 nothing in the presence of Christian principle 
 to quell the impassioned fervour of our desires 
 after right objects ; but the absence of Christian 
 principle does not necessarily extinguish this 
 fervoui'. When we look back to the animating 
 ferment of the British public, on the subject of 
 Africa, v\e will ever contend, that a feeling of 
 obHgation to a spiritual being, was the ingredi- 
 ent which set it agoing, and which kept it a- 
 going. But who can deny the existence and 
 the powerful operation of other ingredients ? 
 An instinctive horror at cruelty, is a sej)arate 
 and independent attribute of the heart, and suf- 
 ficient of itself to inspire the deepest tones of 
 that eloquence which sounded in Parliament, 
 and issued from the press, and spread an infec- 
 tion over all the provinces of the empire, and 
 mustered around the cause, thousands and tens 
 of thousands of our rallying population, and 
 gave such an energy to the public voice, that 
 all the resisting jealousies, and interests of the 
 counti-y were completely overborne : — and hence 
 the interesting spectacle, of carnal and spiritual 
 men lending their respective energies to the ac- 
 complishment of one object, and securing, by 
 their success, a higher name for Britain in the 
 
SERMON XII. 299 
 
 world, than all the wisdom of her counsels, and 
 all the pride of her victories, can ever achieve 
 for her. 
 
 Were it our only aim to carry the acquies- 
 cence of the understanding, there might be a 
 danger in affirming, and urging, and illustrating 
 to excess, the position, that we want to estab- 
 lish among you ; — and it were perhaps better, 
 to Umit ourselves to one simple dehvery of 
 the argument. But our aiui is, if possible, to af- 
 fect the conscience, and to accompUsh this ob- 
 ject, not with one, but with many individuals. 
 And when it is reflected, that one development 
 of the principle may come home more forcibly 
 to some man's experience than another, we must 
 beg to be excused for one recurrence more 
 to a topic, so pregnant of consequence to your 
 everlasting interests. There is a sadly meagre 
 and frivolous conception of human sinfulness, 
 that is prevalent amongst you,— and it goes to 
 foster this delusion, that when we look abroad 
 on the face of society, we must be struck with the 
 diversity of character, which obtains among the 
 individuals who compose it. Some there, are 
 who, in the estimation of the world, are exe- 
 crable for their crimes, but others who, in the 
 same estimation, are illustrious for their virtues. 
 In that general mass of corruption, to which wc 
 would reduce our unfortunate species, is there, 
 it may be asked, no solitary example of what iS 
 pure, and honourable, and lovely? Do wc^nc^ 
 
300 SERMON Xll. 
 
 ver meet with the charity which mehs at suf- 
 fering ; with the honesty which disdains, and is 
 proudly superior to falsehood ; with the active 
 beneficence which gives to others its time and 
 its labour ; with the modesty which shrinks from 
 notice, and gives all its sweetness to retire- 
 ment ; with the gentleness which breathes peace 
 to all, and throws a beautiful lustre over the 
 wallis of domestic society ? If we find these 
 virtues to be sometimes exhibited, is not this 
 an argument against the doctrine of such an 
 entire, and unmitigated depravity, as we have 
 been contending for ? Will it not serve to re- 
 deem humanity from that sweeping indiscrimi- 
 nate charge of corruption, which is so often ad- 
 vanced against it, in all the pride and intoler- 
 ance of orthodoxy ? What better evidence can 
 be given of our love to God, than our adherence 
 to his law ? And are not the virtues which we 
 have just now specified part of that law? Are 
 not they the very virtues which his authority re- 
 quires of us, and which imparts such a charm to 
 the morality of the New Testament ? 
 
 Now, it carries us at once to the bottom of 
 this delusion, to observe, that though the reli- 
 gious principle can never exist, without the 
 amiable and virtuous conduct of the New Tes- 
 tament ; yet, that conduct may, in some mea- 
 sure, be maintained, without the religious prin- 
 ciple. A man may be led to precisely the same 
 conduct, on the impulse of many different prin* 
 
SERMON XII. 301 
 
 ciples. He may be gentle, because it is a pre- 
 scription of the divine law ; — or, he may be 
 gentle, because he is naturally of a peaceful, or 
 indolent constitution; — or, he may be gentle, 
 because he sees it to be an amiable graceful- 
 ness, with which he wishes to adorn his own 
 character ; — or, he may be gentle, because it is 
 the ready way of perpetuating the friendship of 
 those around him ; — or, he may be gentle, be- 
 cause taught to observe it, as a part of courtly 
 and fashionable deportment, — and what was im- 
 planted by education, may come in time to be 
 confirmed, by habit and experience. Now, it 
 is only under the first of these principles, that 
 there is any religion in gentleness. The other 
 principles may produce all the outward appear- 
 ance of this virtue, and much even of its inward 
 complacency, and yet be as distinct from the 
 religious principle, as they are distinct from one 
 another. To infer the strength of the religious 
 principle, from the taste of the human mind, Tor 
 what is graceful and lovely in character, would 
 just be as preposterous, as to infer it from the 
 admiration of a fine picture, or a cultivated 
 landscape. They are not to be confounded. 
 They occupy a different place, even in the clas- 
 sifications of philosophy. We do not deny, that 
 the admiration of what is fine in character, is a 
 principle of a higher order, than the admiration 
 of what is fine in external scenery. So is a taste 
 for what is beautiful in the prospect before us, 
 
sot SEKMON XII. 
 
 a principle of a higher order, than a taste for 
 the sensualities of the epicure. But they, one 
 and all of them, stand at a wide distance from 
 the religious principle : and whether it be taste, 
 or temper, or the love of popularity, or the high 
 impulse of honourable feeling, or even the love 
 of truth, and a natural principle of integrity, — ■ 
 the virtues in question may be so unconnected 
 with religion, as to flourish in the world, and be 
 rewarded by its admiration, even though God 
 were expunged from the belief, and immortality 
 from the prospects, of the species. 
 
 The virtues, then, to which the enemies of 
 our doctrine make such a confident appeal, may 
 have no force whatever in the argument, — be- 
 cause, properly speaking, they may not be ex- 
 emplifications of the religious principle. If you 
 do what is virtuous, because God tells you so, 
 then, and then only, do you give us a fair ex- 
 ample of the authority of religion over your 
 practice. But, if you do it merely because it is 
 lovely, because it is honourable, or because it 
 is a fine moral accomplishment, — we will not 
 refuse the testimony of our admiration, but we 
 cannot submit to such an error, either of con- 
 ception, or of language, as to allow that there is 
 any religion in all this. These quahties have 
 our utmost friendship; and we give the most 
 substantial evidence of this, when, instead of 
 leaving them to their own solitary claims upon 
 the human heart, we call in the aid of religion, 
 
SERMON XII. 3(fe 
 
 and support them by its authority : " Whatso- 
 ever things are pure, or lovely, or honest, or 
 of good report ; if there be any virtue, if there 
 be any praise, think of these things." But we 
 will not admit, that the mere circumstance of 
 their being lovely, supercedes the authority of 
 religion ; nor can we endure such an injustice 
 to the Author of all that is graceful, both in 
 nature and morality, as that the native charms 
 of virtue should usurp, in our admiration, the 
 place of God — of him who gave to virtue all its 
 charms, and formed the heart of man to love 
 and to admire them. 
 
 Be not deceived, then, into a rejection of that 
 doctrine which forms the great basis of a sin- 
 ner's religion, by the specimens of moral ex- 
 cellence which are to be met with in society; 
 or by the praise which your own virtues extoH 
 from an applauding neighbourhood. Virtue 
 may exist, and in such a degree too, as to con- 
 stitute it a lovely object in the eyes of the 
 world, but if there be in it no reference of 
 the mind to the will of God, there is no reli- 
 gion in it. Such virtue as this has its reward 
 in its natural consequences, in the admiration of 
 others, or in the delights of conscious satisfac- 
 tion. But we cannot see why God will reward 
 it in the capacity of your master, when his ser- 
 vice was not the principle of it, 'and you wer^ 
 therefore not acting at all the part of a servant to 
 him, — nor do we see how he can reward it in the 
 
304 SERMON XII. 
 
 capacity of your judge, when, in the whole pro- 
 cess of virtuous feehng, and virtuous sentiment, 
 and virtuous conduct, you carried in your heart 
 no reference whatever, for a single moment, to 
 him as to your lawgiver. We do not deny that 
 there are many such examples of virtue in the 
 world ; but then we insist upon it, that they 
 cannot be put down to the account of religion. 
 They often may, and actually do, exist in a state 
 of entire separation from the religious prnciple; 
 and in that case, they go no farther than to 
 prove that your taste is unvitiated, that your 
 temper is amiable, that your social dispositions 
 promote the peace and welfare of society ; and 
 they will be rewarded with its approbation. 
 Now, it is well that you act your part as a mem- 
 ber of society; and religion, by making this, 
 one of its injunctions, gives us the very best se- 
 curity, that wherever its influence prevails, it 
 will be done in the most perfect manner. But 
 the point we labour- to impress is, that a man 
 may be what we all understand by a good 
 member of society, without the authority of God 
 as his legislator, being either recognised or 
 acted upon. We do not say that his error 
 lies in being a good member of society.- This, 
 though only a circumstance at present, is a 
 very fortunate one.' The error lies in his hav- 
 ing discarded the authority of God, or ra- 
 ther, in his never having admitted the influ- 
 ence of that authority over his heart, or his- 
 
SERMON XII. 305 
 
 practice. We want to guard him against the 
 delusion, that the principle which he has, can 
 ever be accepted as a substitute for the prin- 
 ciple he has not, — or, that the very highest 
 sense of duty, which his situation as a member 
 of society, impresses upon his feelings, will ever 
 be received as an atonement for wanting that 
 sense of duty to God, which he ought to feel 
 in the far more exalted capacity of his servant, 
 and candidate for his approbation. We stand 
 on the high ground, that he is the subject of 
 the Almighty, — nor shall we shrink from declar- 
 ing the whole extent of the principle. Let his 
 path in society be ever so illustrious, by the 
 virtues which adorn it ; let every word, and 
 every performance, be as honourable as a proud 
 sense of integrity can make it ; let the saluta- 
 tions of the market-place mark him out as the 
 most respectable of the citizens ; and the grati- 
 tude of a thousand families ring the praises of 
 his beneficence to the world : — If the actor in 
 this splendid exhibition, carry in his mind no re- 
 ference to the authority of God, we do not 
 hesitate to pronounce him unworthy, — nor shall 
 all the execrations of generous, but mistaken 
 principle, deter us from putting forth our hand 
 to strip him of his honours. What ! is the 
 world to gaze in admiration on this fine specta- 
 cle of virtue ; and are we to be told that the 
 Being, who gave such falculties to one of his 
 children, and provides the threatre for their ex- 
 
 59 
 
306 SERMON XII. 
 
 ercise,-— that the Being, who called this moral 
 scene into existence, and gave it all its beauties, 
 — that he is to be forgotten, and neglected as 
 of no consequence ? Shall we give a deceitful 
 lustre to the virtues of him who is unmindful of 
 his God, — and with all the grandeur of eternity 
 before us, can we turn to admire those short- 
 lived exertions, which only shed a fleeting bril- 
 liancy over a paltry and perishable scene ? It 
 is true that he who is counted faithful in little 
 will also be counted faithful in much; and 
 when God is the principle of this fidelity, the 
 very humblest wishes of benevolence will be re- 
 warded. But its most splendid exertions with- 
 out this principle, have no inheritance in hea- 
 ven. Human praise, and human eloquence, may 
 acknowledge it ; but the Discerner of the heart 
 never will. The heart may be the seat of 
 every amiable feeling, and every claim which 
 comes to it in the shape of human misery may 
 find a welcome ; but if the love of God be not 
 there, it is not right with God, — and he who 
 owns it, will die in his sins : he is in a state of 
 impenitency. 
 
 Having thus disposed of those virtues which 
 exist in a state of independence on the religious 
 principle, — we must be forced to recur to the 
 doctrine of human depravity, in all its original 
 aggravation. Man is corrupt, and the estrange- 
 ment of his heart from God, is the decisive evi- 
 dence of it. Every day of his life the first com- 
 
SERMON XIL 307 
 
 mandment of the law is trampled on, — and it is 
 that commandment on which the authority ol' 
 the whole is suspended. His best exertions are 
 unsound in their very principle; and as the love 
 of God reigns not within him, all that has usuFp- 
 ed the name of virtue, and deceived us by its 
 semblance, must be a mockery and a delusion. 
 
 We shall conclude with three observations, 
 First, there is nothing more justly fitted to revolt 
 the best feelings of the human heart against or- 
 thodoxy, than when any thing is said in its de- 
 fence, which tends to mar the credit or the 
 lustre of a moral accomplishment, so lovely as 
 benevolence. Let it be observed, then, that sub- 
 stantial benevolence is rarely, if ever, to be found 
 apart from piety, — and that piety is but the hy- 
 pocrisy of a name, when benevolence, in all the 
 unweariedness of its well doing, does not go 
 along with it. Benevolence may make some 
 brilliant exhibitions of herself, without the insti- 
 gation of the religious principle. But in these 
 cases you seldom have the touchstone of a pain- 
 ful, sacrifice, — and you never have a spiritual 
 aim, after the good of our imperishable nature. 
 It is easy to indulge a constitutional feeling. It 
 is easy to make a pecuniary surrender. It is 
 easy to move gently along, amid the visits and 
 the attentions of kindness, when every eye smiles 
 welcome, and the soft whispers of gratitude mi- 
 nister their pleasing reward, and flatter you into 
 the delusion that you are an angel of mercy. 
 
SOS SERMON XII. 
 
 But give us the benevolence of him, M^ho can 
 ply his faithful task in the face of every discour^ 
 agement, — who can labour in scenes where there 
 is no brilliancy whatever to reward him, — whose 
 kihdness is that sturdy and abiding principle 
 which can weather all the murmurs of ingrati- 
 tude, and all the provocations of dishonesty, — 
 who can find his way through poverty's putrid 
 lanes, and depravity's most nauseous and disgust- 
 ing receptacles, — who can maintain the uniform 
 and placid temper, within the secrecy of his own 
 home, and amid the irksome annoyances of his 
 own family, — who can endure hardships, as a 
 good soldier of Christ Jesus, — whose humanity 
 acts with as much vigour amid the reproach, and 
 the calumny, and the contradiction of sinners, 
 as when soothed and softened by the poetic 
 accompaniment of weeping orphans, and in- 
 teresting cottages, — and, above all, who la- 
 bours to convert sinners, to subdue their resis- 
 tance of the gospel, and to spiritualize them 
 into a meetness for the inheritance of the 
 saints. We maintain, that no such benevo- 
 lence, realizing all these features, exists, with- 
 out a deeply seated principle of piety lying at the 
 bottom of it. Walk from Dan to Beersheba, 
 and, away from Christianity, and beyond the 
 circle of its influences, there is positively no such 
 benevolence to be found. The patience, the 
 meekness, the difficulties of such a benevolence, 
 cannot be sustained without the influence of a 
 
SERMON XII. 309 
 
 heavenly principle, — and when all that decks the 
 theatre of this world is withdrawn, what else is 
 there but the magnificence of eternity, to pour a 
 glory over its path, and to minister encourage- 
 ment in the midst of labours unnoticed by hu- 
 min eye, and unrewarded by human testimony ? 
 Even the most splendid enterprises of benevo- 
 lence, which the world ever witnessed, can 
 be traced to the operation of what the world 
 laughs at, as a quakerish andmethodistical piety. 
 And we appeal to the abolition of the slave 
 trade, and the still nobler abolition of vice and 
 ignorance, which is now accomplishing amongst 
 the uncivilized countries of the earth, for the 
 proof, that in good will to men, as well as glory 
 to God, they are the men of piety who bear 
 away the palm of superiority and of triumph. 
 
 But, Secondly, If all Scripture and all obser- 
 vation, are on the side of our text, should not 
 this be turned by each of us into a personal con- 
 cern ? Should it not be taken up, and pursued, 
 as a topic in which we all have a deep indivi- 
 dual interest ? Should it not have a more per- 
 manent hold of us, than a mere amusing gene- 
 ral speculation .^ Are not prudence, and anti- 
 cipation, and a sense of danger, all linked with 
 the conclusion we have attempted to press upon 
 you ? In one w^ord, if there be such a thing as a 
 moral government on the part of God,— if there 
 be such a thing as the authority of a high and 
 divine legislature, — if there be such a thing as a 
 
310 SERMON XII. 
 
 throne in heaven, and a judge sitting on that 
 throne, — should not the question, What shall I 
 do to be saved ? come with all its big and deeply 
 felt significancy into the heart and conscience 
 of every one of us ? We know that there is a 
 very loose and general security upon this subject, 
 — that the question, if it ever be suggested at all, 
 is disposed of in an easy, indolent, and superficial 
 way, by some such presumption, as that God is 
 merciful, and that should be enough to pacify us. 
 But why recur to any presumption, for the pur- 
 pose of bringing the question to a settlement, 
 when, upon this very topic, we are favoured witl^ 
 an authoritative message from God ? — when an 
 actual embassy has come from him, and that on 
 the express errand of reconciliation ? — when the 
 records of this embassy have been collected in- 
 to a volume, within the reach of all who will 
 stretch forth their hand to it ?— when the obvi- 
 ous expedient of consulting this record is before 
 us ? And surely, if what God says of himself, is 
 of higher signification than what we think him to 
 be, and if he tell us not merely that he is merci- 
 ful, but that there is a particular way in which he 
 chooses to be so ; — nothing remains for us but 
 submissively to learn that way, and obediently 
 to go along with it. But he actually tells us, 
 that there is no other name given under heaven, 
 Avhereby man can be saved, but the name of Je- 
 sus. He tells us, that it is only in Christ, that he 
 has reconciled the world unto himself He 
 
SERMON XII. 311 
 
 tells us, that our alone redemption is in him 
 whom God has set forth to be a propitiation 
 through faith in his blood,— that he might be 
 just, while the justifier of him who believeth in 
 Jesus ;— and surely, we must either give up the 
 certainty of the record, or count these to be 
 faithful sayings, and worthy of all accepta- 
 tion. 
 
 Lastly, The question may occur, after having 
 established the fact of human corruption, and 
 recommended a simple acquiescence in the Sa- 
 viour for forgiveness. What becomes of the cor- 
 ruption after this ? Must we just be doing with 
 it as an obstinate peculiarity of our nature, bear- 
 ing down all our powers of resistance, and mak- 
 ing every struggle with it hopeless and un- 
 availing? For the answer to this question, we 
 commit you, as before, to the record. He who 
 is in Christ Jesus is a new creature. Sin has no 
 longer dominion over him. That very want 
 which constituted the main violence of the dis- 
 ease, is made up to him. He wanted the love 
 of God ; and this love is shed abroad in his heart 
 by the Holy Ghost. He wanted the love of 
 his neighbour; but God enters into a covenant 
 with him, by which he puts this law in his heart, 
 and writes it in his mind. The spirit is given 
 to them who ask it in faith, and the habitual 
 prayer, of. Support me in the performance o{ 
 this duty, — or, Carry me in safety through this 
 trial of my heart and of my principles. — is heard 
 
312 SERMON XII. 
 
 with acceptance, and answered with power. The 
 power of Christ is made to rest on those who 
 look to him ; and they will find to be their expe- 
 rience what Paul found to be his, — they will be 
 able to do all things through Christ strengthen- 
 ing them. Now, the question we have to put 
 is, — Tell us, if all this sound strange, and mys- 
 terious, and foreign, to the general style of your 
 conceptions ? Then be alarmed for your safe- 
 ty. The things you thus profess to be strange 
 to you, are not the peculiar notions of one man, 
 or the still more peculiar phraseology of another. 
 They are the very notions and the very phraseo- 
 logy, of the Bible, — and you, by your antipathy 
 or disregard to them, bring yourselves under 
 precisely the same reckoning with God, that 
 you do with a distant acquaintance, whom you 
 insult by returning his letter unopened, or des- 
 pise, by suffering it to lie beside you unread and 
 unattended to. In this indelible word of God, 
 you will meet with the free offer of forgiveness 
 for the past, and a provision laid before you, 
 by which all who make use of it, are carried 
 forward to amendment, and progressive virtue, 
 for the future. They are open to all, and at 
 the taking of all; but in proportion to the frank- 
 ness, and freeness, and universality, of the offer, 
 will be the severity of that awful threatening to 
 them who despise it. How shall they escape, if 
 they neglect so great a salvation ? 
 
SERMON XIII. 
 
 THE NATURAL ENMITY OF THE MIND AGAINST GOD. 
 
 Romans viii. 7. 
 " The carnal mind is enmity against God." 
 
 "VtTE should be blinding ourselves against the 
 light of experience, did we deny of manj 
 of our acquaintances, that they have either 
 brought into the world, or have acquired, by 
 a natural process of education, such a gentle- 
 ness of temper, such a docility, such a taste 
 for the amiable, and the kind, such an ho- 
 nourable sense of integrity, such a feeling 
 sympathy for the wants and misfortunes of 
 others, that it would not be easy, and what is 
 more, we may venture to say, from the example 
 of our Saviour, who, when he Igoked to the 
 young man, loved him, that it would positively 
 not be right, to withhold from them our admi- 
 ration and our tenderness. Still it were a vio- 
 lation of all scriptural propriety in language, to 
 say of them that they were not carnal, or not 
 
 40 
 
314 SERMON Xlll. 
 
 carnally minded. All, by the very signification 
 of the term, are carnal, whose minds either re- 
 tain their original constitution, or have under- 
 gone no other transforming process than a mere 
 process of natural education. Some minds are, 
 in these circumstances, more agreeable to look 
 npon than others, just as some faces are more 
 agreeable than others, to the eye. Each mind 
 has its own peculiar character, just as each face 
 has its own set of features, and its own com- 
 plexion. But, as all the varieties in the latter, 
 from exquisite beauty to most revolting defor- 
 mity, do not exclude irom any, the one and.uni- 
 versal attribute of decay, — so neither may all the 
 constitutional varieties in the former, from the 
 most sordid to the most naturally upright and 
 amiable, exclude the possession of some one and 
 universal attribute ; and it may be the very at- 
 tribute assigned to nature in the text — even 
 hostility against God. 
 
 Let us first offer some remarks on the affir- 
 mation of the text, that the carnal mind is en- 
 mity against God^ — emd then shortly consider, 
 how it is that the gospel of Jesus Christ suits its 
 applications to this great moral disease. 
 
 I. It appears a very presumptuous attempt, 
 on the part of a human interpreter, when the 
 object which he proposes, and which he erects 
 into a separate head of discussion, is to prove 
 the assertion of the text. Should not the very 
 circumstance of its being the assertion of the 
 
SERMON XIII. 315 
 
 text, be proof enough for you ? On what better 
 foundation can your belief be laid than on the 
 testimony of God? and when we come to under- 
 stand the meaning of the thing testified, is not 
 the bare fact of God being the witness of it, 
 sufficient ground for its credibility to rest upon ? 
 Shall man's reasoning carry a greater authority 
 along with it, than God's declaration ? Is your 
 faith to depend on the success or the failure of 
 his argument ? Whether he succeed in establish- 
 ing the truth of the assertion or not, upoai in- 
 dependent reasonings of his own, — remember 
 that by reading it out in his text, he has already 
 come forward with an argument more conclu- 
 sive than any which his ingenuity can devise. 
 And yet, how often do your convictions lie sus- 
 pended on the ability of the preacher, and on the 
 soundness of his demonstrations ?. You refuse to 
 believe truth, plainly set before you in the Bible, 
 because the minister has failed in making out 
 his point. Now, the truth of the point in ques- 
 tiotf may have already received its decisive set- 
 tlement, from the text delivered in your hear- 
 ing. We may try, and take our own way of 
 bringing the truth of your enmity against God, 
 close and home upon your consciences. But, 
 if there be truth in all the sayings of the Bible, 
 enough has been already said, to undermine the 
 security of your fancied attainments. It is said, 
 that in our nature there is a rooted and an cm- 
 bodied character of hostihty to our Maker. This 
 
316 SERMON XIII. 
 
 should make the wisest and most sufficient 
 among you feel that you are poor indeed, — and 
 let other expedients, to press home the melan- 
 choly truth fail, or be effectual as they may, this 
 is surely enough to convince and to alarm you. 
 But, though we cannot add to the truth ol 
 God, there is such a thing as what the Apostle 
 calls making that truth manifest to your con- 
 sciences. Your own observation may attest the 
 very same truth, which God announces to you 
 in his word. And if it be a truth, respecting tlie 
 state of your own heart, this agreement be- 
 tween what God says you are, and what you 
 find yourselves to be, is often most powerfully 
 instrumental, in reclaiming men to the acknow- 
 ledgment of the truth, and bringing their heart 
 under its influence. This is the very argument 
 which compelled the faith of the woman of Sa- 
 maria. " Come and see the man which told me 
 all the things that ever I did ; is not this the 
 Christ?" It is the very alignment, by which 
 many an unbeliever was convinced in the Apps- 
 tie's days. The secrets of his heart were ma<ie 
 manifest, and so falling down on his face, he 
 worshipped God, and reported that God was in 
 them, of a truth. We cannot make the assertion 
 in the text stronger than God has made it alrea- 
 dy, — ^but we may be able to guide your obser- 
 vations to that which is the subject of it — even 
 to your own mind. We may lead you to attend 
 more closely, and to view more distinctly, the 
 
SERMON XIII. 317 
 
 state of your minds, than you have ever yet done. 
 If your finding of the matter shall agree with 
 God's saying about it, it may make the truth of 
 the text tell with energy upon your consciences ; 
 — and it were well for one ajid all of us, that we 
 obtained a more overwhelming sense of our ne- 
 cessities than we have ever yet gotten ; that we 
 saw ourselves in those true colours of deformity 
 which really belong to us ; that the inveteracy 
 of our disease as sinners, were more known and 
 more felt by us ; that we could lift up the mantle 
 of delusion, which the accomplishments of na- 
 ture throw over the carnal mind, and by which 
 they spread a most bewildering gloss over all the 
 rebelliousness and ingratitude of the inner man. 
 Could we but make you feel your need and your 
 helplessness as sinners, — could we chase away 
 from you the pride and the security of your 
 fancied attainments, — could we lead you to 
 mourn and be in heaviness, under a sense of 
 your alienations and idolatries, and risings of 
 hatred against the God, who created, and who 
 sustains you ; — then might we look for the over- 
 tures of the gospel being more thankfully list- 
 ened to, more cordially embraced, more re- 
 joiced in as the alone suitable remedy to the 
 wants and the sorenesses of your fallen nature, 
 — then might we look for the attitude of self- 
 dependence being broken down, and for all 
 trust, and all glorying, being transferred from 
 
SIS SERMON XIII. 
 
 ourselves, and laid upon Jesus Christ, and him 
 crucified. 
 
 It is no proof of love to God that we do 
 many things, and that too with the willing con- 
 sent of the mind, the performance of which is 
 agreeable to his law. If the same thing might 
 be done upon either of two principles, then the 
 doing of it may only prove the existence of one 
 of these principles, while the other has no pre- 
 sence or operation in the mind whatever. I do 
 not steal, and the reason of it may be either that 
 I love God, and so keep his commandments, 
 or it may be that I have honourable feelings , 
 and would spurn at the disgracefulness of such 
 an action. This is only one example, but the 
 bare statement of it serves for a thousand more. 
 It lets us in at once to the decisive fact, that 
 there are many principles of action applauded, 
 and held in reverence, and most useful to so- 
 ciety, and withal urging us to the performance 
 of what, in the matter of it, is agreeable to the 
 law of God, which may have a practical as- 
 cendancy over a man whose heart is alienated 
 from the love of God. Propose the question 
 to yourself. Would not I do this good thing, or 
 abstain from this evil thing, though God had 
 no will in the matter ? If you would, then put 
 not down what is altogether due to other prin- 
 ciples to the principle of love to God, or a de- 
 sire of pleasing him. The principle upon which 
 
SERMON Xlir. 319 
 
 you have acted may be respectable, and ho- 
 nourable, and amiable. We are not disputing 
 all this. We are only saying, that it is not the 
 love of God ; and should we hear any one of 
 you assert, that I have nothing to reproach 
 myself with, and that I give every body dieir 
 own, and that I possess a fair character in so- 
 ciety, and have done nothing to forfeit it, and 
 that I have my share of generosity, and honour, 
 and tenderness, and civility, our only reply is, 
 that this may be very true. You may have a 
 very large share of these, and of other estimable 
 principles, but along with the possession of these 
 many things, you may lack one thing, and that 
 one thing may be the love of God. An enlight- 
 ened discerner of the heart may look into you, 
 and say, with our Saviour in the text, " I know 
 you that you have not the love of God in you." 
 It is no test whatever of your love to God, 
 that you tolerate him, when he calls upon you, 
 to do the things which your natural principles 
 incline you to do, and which you would have 
 done at any rate. But when he claims that 
 place in your affections which you give to many 
 of the objects of the world,— when he puts in 
 for that share of your heart which you give to 
 wealth, or pleasure, or reputation among men. 
 — then is not God a weariness ? and does not 
 the inner man feel impatience and dislike at 
 these grievous exactions? and when the will of 
 God thwarts the natural current of your tastes 
 
^20 SERMON XIII. 
 
 and enjoyments, is not God, at the moment of 
 urging that will, with all the natural authority 
 which belongs to him, a positive offence to 
 you? 
 
 How would you like the visit of a man whose 
 presence broke up some arrangement that you 
 had set your heart upon ; or marred the enjoy- 
 ment of some favourite scheme that you were 
 going to put into execution ? Would not you 
 hate the visit ? and if it were often repeated, — 
 if the disappointments you received from this 
 cause were frequent and perpetual, — if you saw 
 a systematic design of thwarting you by these 
 galling and numerous interruptions, would not 
 you also cordially hate the visitor, and give the 
 most substantial evidence of your hatred, too, 
 by shunning him, or shutting him out? Now, 
 is not God just such a visitor ? O how many 
 favourite schemes of enjoyment would the 
 thought of him, and of his will, if faithfully ad- 
 mitted to the inner chambers of the mind, put to 
 flight! How many fond calculations be given 
 up about the world, the love of which is oppo- 
 site to the love of the Father. How many trif- 
 ling amusements behoved to be painfully sur- 
 rendered, if a sense of God's will were to tell 
 upon the conscience with all the energy that is 
 due to it. How many darling habits abandoned, 
 if the whole man were brought under the< do- 
 minion of this imperious visitor;— how many 
 affections torn away from the objects on which 
 
SERMON Xll. 321 
 
 they are now fastened, if his presence were at 
 all times attended to, and he was regarded with 
 that affection which he at all times demands of 
 us ! 
 
 This may explain a fact, which we fear must 
 come near to the conscience of many a respect- 
 able man, and that is, the recoil which he has of- 
 ten experienced, as if from some object of se- 
 vere and unconquerable aversion, when the 
 preacher urges upon his thoughts some scrip- 
 tural representations either of the will or the 
 character of God. Or take this fact in another 
 way, and in which it presents itself, if not more 
 strikingly, at least more habitually; and that is, 
 the undeniable circumstaiice of God being shut 
 out of his thoughts for the great majority of his 
 time, and him feeling the same kind of ease, at 
 the exclusion, as when he shuts the door on the 
 most unwelcome of his visitors. The reason is, 
 that the inner man, busied with other objects, 
 would positively be offended at the intrusion of 
 the thought of God. It is because, to admit 
 him, with all his high claims and spiritual re- 
 quirements into your mind, would be to disturb 
 you in the enjoyment of objects which are bet- 
 ter loved and more sought after than he. It is 
 because your heart is occupied with idols, that 
 God is shut out of it. It is because your heart 
 is after another treasure. It is because your 
 heart is set upon other things. Whether it !)«< 
 
 41 
 
322 SERMON XIII. 
 
 wealth, or amusement, or distinction, or the ease 
 and the pleasures of life, we pretend not to 
 know ; but there is a something, which is your 
 god, to the exclusion of the great God of hea- 
 ven and earth. The Being who is upholding 
 you all the time, and in virtue of whose preserv- 
 ing hand, you live, and think, and enjoy, is all 
 the while unminded and unregarded by you. 
 You look upon him as an interruption. It is of 
 no consequence to the argument what the occu- 
 pation of your heart be, if it is such an occupa- 
 tion as excludes God from it. It may be what 
 the world calls a vicious occupation, — the pur- 
 suits of a dishonest, or the debaucheries of a 
 profligate life,— and, in this case, the world has 
 no objection to stigmatise you with enmity against 
 God. Or it may be what the world calls an 
 innocent occupation — amusement to make you 
 happy, work to earn a subsistence, business to es- 
 tablish a hberal provision for your families. But 
 your heart may be so given to it, that God is rob- 
 bed of his portion of your heart altogether. Or it 
 may be what the world calls an honourable oc- 
 cupation, — the pursuit of eminence in the walks 
 of science or of patriotism ; and still there may 
 be an exclusion, or a hatred, of the God who 
 puts in for all things being done to his glory. 
 Or it may be what the world calls an elegant oc- 
 cupation, — even that of a mind enamoured with 
 the tastefulness of literature ; but it may be so 
 enamoured with this, that the God who created 
 
SERMON XIII. ^2a 
 
 your mind, and all the tastes which are within 
 it, and all the objects which are without it, and 
 which minister to its most exquisite pratiftca- 
 tion, — this God, we say, may be turned away from 
 with a feeling of the most nauseous antipathy, 
 and you may give the most substantial evidence 
 of your hatred to him, by ridding your thoughts 
 of him altogether. Or, lastly, it may be what the 
 world calls a virtuous occupation, even that of a 
 mind bustling with the full play of its energies, 
 among enterprises of charity and plans of public 
 good. Yet even here, wonderful asyou may think 
 it, there may be a total exclusion and forgetful- 
 ness of God ; and, while the mind is filled and 
 gratified with a rejoicing sense of its activity 
 and its usefulness, it may be merely delighting 
 itself with a constitutional gratification, — and 
 God the author of that constitution, be never 
 thought of, — or, if thought of according to the 
 holiness of his attributes, and the nature of that 
 friendship, opposite to the friendship of the 
 world, which he demands of us, and the kind 
 of employment which forms the reward and 
 the happiness of his saints in eternity, even the 
 praise and the contemplation of himself, — if 
 thought of, we say, according to this his real 
 character, and these the real requirements that 
 he lays upon us, — even the man to whom the 
 word yields the homage of virtue may think of his 
 God with feelings of offensiveness and disgust. 
 
324 SERMON XIII. 
 
 There is nothing monstrous in all this, to the 
 men of our world, seeing that they have each 
 a share in that deep and lurking ungodliness, 
 which has both so vitiated our nature, and so 
 blinded all who inherit this nature, against a 
 sense of its enormity. But only conceive how 
 it must be thought of, and how the contempla- 
 tion of it must be felt, among those who can 
 look on character, with a spiritual and intelli- 
 gent estimation. How must the pure eye of an 
 angel be moved at such a spectacle of worth- 
 lessness, — and surely, in the records of heaven, 
 this great moral peculiarity of our outcast race 
 must stand engraven as that, which of all 
 others, has the character of guilt most nakedly 
 and most essentially belonging to it. That the 
 bosom of a thing formed should feel cold or 
 indifferent to him who formed it, — that not a 
 thought or an image should be so unwelcome 
 to man, as that of his Maker, — that the crea- 
 ture should thus turn round on its Creator, and 
 eye disgust upon him, — that its every breath 
 should be envenomed with hatred against him 
 who inspired it, — or, if it be not hatred, but 
 only unconcern, or disinclination, that even 
 this should be the real disposition of a fashion- 
 ed and sustained being, towards the hand of 
 his Preserver, — there is a perversity here, 
 which time may palliate for a season, but 
 which, under a universal reign of justice, must 
 
SERMON XIII. S2o 
 
 at length be brought out to its adequate con- 
 demnation. And on that day, when the earth 
 is to be burnt up, and all its flatteries shall 
 have subsided, will it be seen of many a heart 
 that rejoiced in the applause and friendship of 
 this world, that, alienated from the love of 
 God, it was indeed in the gall of bitterness, and 
 in the bond of iniquity. 
 
 Nor does it palliate the representation which 
 we have now given, that a God, in the fancied 
 array of poetic loveliness — that a God of mere 
 natural perfection, and without one other moral 
 attribute than the single attribute of indulgence 
 — that a God, divested of all which can make 
 him repulsive to sinners, and, for this purpose, 
 shorn of all those glories, which truth and au- 
 thority, and holiness, throw around his charac- 
 ter — that such a God should be idolized at times 
 by many a sentimentalist. It would form no 
 deduction from our enmity against the true 
 God, that we give an occasional hour to the 
 worship of a graven image, made with our own 
 hands — and it is just of as little significancy to 
 the argument, that we feel an occasional glow 
 of affection or of reverence, towards a fictitious 
 being of our own imagination. If there be truth 
 in the Bible, it is there where God has made 
 an authentic exhibition of his nature, — and if 
 God in Christ be an offence to you — if you dis- 
 like this way of approach — if you shrink from 
 the contemplation of that Being, who bids you 
 
3 26 J^ERMON Xllf. 
 
 sanctify him in your hearts, and who claims such 
 a preference in your regard, as shall dispossess 
 your affections for all that is earthly — if you 
 have no relish for the intercourse of prayer, and 
 of spiritual communion with such a God — if 
 your memory neither love to recal him, nor your 
 fancy to dwell upon him, nor he be the being 
 with whom you greatly delight yourself, the ha- 
 bitation to which you resort continually, — then 
 be assured, that amid the painted insignificancy 
 of all your other accomplishments, your heart 
 is not right with God ; and he who is the Father 
 of your existence, and of all that gladdens it, 
 may still be to you a loathing and an abomina- 
 tion. 
 
 Neither does it palliate the representation, 
 which we have now offered, that we do many 
 things with the direct object of doing that which 
 is pleasing to God. [t is true, there cannot be love 
 where there is no desire to please ; but it is as 
 true, that there may be a desire to please where 
 there is no love. Why, I may both hate and 
 fear the man, whom f may find it very con- 
 venient to please; and to secure whose favour, 
 I may practise a thousand arts of accommoda- 
 tion and compliance. I may comply by action — 
 but instead of complying with my will, I may 
 abominate the necessity which constrains me. 
 I may be subject to his pleasure in my person, 
 and in my performances — but you would not 
 say, while hatred rankled within me, that I was 
 
SERMON XIII. 327 
 
 subject to him with my mind. A sovereign may 
 overrule the humours of arebelHous province, by 
 the presence of his resistless military — but you 
 would not say that there was any loyalty in thife 
 forced subordination. He may compel the bon- 
 dage of their actual services — but you would 
 not say, that it was in this part of his domi- 
 nions, where the principle of subjection to him 
 existed in the minds of the people. We have 
 already affirmed, that though our will went along 
 with a number of performances, which in the 
 matter of them were agreeable to God's law — 
 this was far from an unfailing indication of love 
 to God ; for there may be a thousand other con- 
 stitutional principles, the residence and opera- 
 tion of which in the heart may give rise to these 
 performances, while there was an utter distaste, 
 and hostility on our part to God. They may be 
 done, not because God wills the doing, but be- 
 cause the doing falls in with our humour, or our 
 interest, or our vanity, or our instinctive grati- 
 fication. But now we are prepared to go far- 
 ther, and say, that they may be done, because 
 God wills the doing, and yet there may be an 
 utter want of subjection in the mind, to the law 
 of God. The terror of his power may constrain 
 you to many acts of obedience, even as the call. 
 " Flee from the coming wrath,-' told on the dis- 
 ciples of John the Baptist. But obedience may 
 be rendered to all the requirements of this pro- 
 phet. Thieves, and swearers, and sabbath-break- 
 
328 SERMON XII. 
 
 ers, maj, under the fearofthe coming vengeance, 
 give up their respective enormities, and jet 
 their minds be altogether carnal, and utterly 
 destitute of subjection to the law of God. There 
 may be the obedience of the hand, while there is 
 the gall of bitterness in the heart, at the necessi- 
 ty which constrains it. It may not be the consent- 
 ing of the mind, to the law of him whom you 
 delight to please, and to honour. Now, this is 
 the service for which it is the aim of Christiani- 
 ty to prepare you. It is by putting that law, 
 which was graven on tables of stone, upon the 
 fables of your heart, that it enables you to yield 
 that obedience, which is acceptable to God. 
 He is grieved at the reluctancy of your services. 
 No performances can satisfy him, while your 
 heart remains in shut and shielded alienation 
 against him. What he wants, is to gain the 
 friendship and the confidence of his creatures ; 
 and he feels all the concern of a wounded and 
 mortified father, when he knocks at the door of 
 vour heart, and finds its affections to be away 
 from him. He condescends to plead the matter, 
 and with the tenderness of a disappointed father, 
 does he say, " Wherein have I wearied you, O 
 children of Israel, testify against me ?" You may 
 fear him ; you may heap sacrifices upon his al- 
 tar; you may bring the outer man to something 
 like a slavish obedience, at his bidding, — but 
 till your heart be subdued, by that great pro- 
 cess, which all who are his spiritual subject?^ 
 
SERMON Xlfl. S29 
 
 must undergo, you are carnal, and you do not 
 love him. Your obedience is like a body with- 
 out a soul. The very principle which gives it 
 all its value, is wanting. It is this which turns 
 the whole to bitterness. It is this, which, with 
 all the bustling activity of your services, keeps 
 you dead in trespasses and sins. It is this which 
 mars every religious performance, and imparts 
 the character of rebelliousness to every one item, 
 in the list of your plausible and ostentatious du- 
 ties. There is not one of them which is not ac- 
 companied with an act of disobedience, and that 
 too, to the first and greatest commandment, by 
 which we are called upon to love the Lord 
 wdtli all our heart, strength, and soul. Though 
 the hand should be subject, — though the mourh 
 should be subject, — though all the organs of the 
 outer man should be subject; yet it availcth 
 nothing, if the will of the mind is not subject. 
 I could sell all my goods to feed the poor. 
 I could compel my hand to sign an order to 
 that effect, — and I could keep my hand from re- 
 versing that order till it was executed. But all 
 this I may do, says Paul, and yet have nothings 
 because I have not charity. It is not the act of 
 well doing to your neighbour, but a principle 
 of love to your neighbour, on which God stamps 
 the testimony of his approbation. In like man- 
 ner, it is not the act of well doing to God, but 
 the principle of love to God, which he values; — 
 and if this be withheld from him, you are cai'- 
 
 42 
 
330 SERMON XIII. 
 
 nal ; and with all your painful and multiplied 
 attempts at obedience, your mind is not subject 
 to the law of God. 
 
 We shall conclude, at present, with two short 
 reflections. 
 
 First, If any of you are convinced of the just- 
 ness of the representations which we have now 
 given, you will perceive, that your guilt in the 
 sight of God, may be of a far deeper and more 
 alarming kind, than men are generally aware of. 
 And such a view of the matter may be quite in- 
 tolerable to him who nauseates the peculiarities of 
 the gospel, — to him who has a contempt for the 
 foolishness of that preachings of which the great 
 burden is Jesus Christ, and him crucified, — to 
 him, in a word, whom the true description of 
 our moral disease, must terrify or offend, — see- 
 ing that he carries a distaste in his heart toward 
 the alone remedy, by which the disease can be 
 met and extirpated. 
 
 But secondly, There is another class of people, 
 whom such a view of the actual state of human 
 nature ought to tranquillize, by bringing their 
 minds out of perplexity, into a state of firm and 
 confident decision. There are often in a con- 
 gregation, a set of hearers not yet shut up into 
 the faith, but approaching towards it, — with a 
 growing taste for the Christianity of the New Tes- 
 tament, but without a full and a final acquiescence 
 in it, — with an opening and an enlarging sense of 
 the importance of the gospel, but still halting be- 
 
SERMON XIIl. 331 
 
 tvveen two opinions respecting it ; who, in parti- 
 cular, are not sure wiiere their sole dependancc 
 for salvation should be placed, whether singly 
 upon their own perform an ces, or singly upon the 
 righteousness of Christ, or jointly upon both. 
 Now, we trust that the lesson of our text may 
 have the effect with some, of bringing this un- 
 settled account more speedily to its termination. 
 You may have hitherto, perhaps, been under the 
 impression, that the condition of man ^\ as not 
 just so bad as to require a Saviour, who must 
 undertake the whole of his cure, and bring 
 about the whole of his salvation. You have 
 attempted to share with the Saviour in the mat- 
 ter of your redemption. Instead of looking 
 upon it with the eye of the Apostle, as be- 
 ing all of grace, or all of works, you have, in 
 some way or other, attempted a compromise 
 between them ; and this has the undoubted ef- 
 fect of keeping you at a distance from Christ. 
 You have not felt your entire need of him, and 
 therefore you have not leaned in close and con- 
 stant dependence upon him. But let the torch 
 of a spiritual lavr be lifted over your characters, 
 and through the guise of its external decencies 
 reveal to you the mountain of iniquity w ithin ; 
 let t^he deformity of the heart be made known, 
 and you become sensible of the fruitlessness of 
 €very endeavour, so long as the consent of a 
 willing cordiality is withheld from the ])erson 
 and authority of God ; let the uttcj- i)owcrlcss- 
 
332 SERMON XIII. 
 
 ness of all your doings, be contrasted with the 
 perversity of your stubborn and unmanageable 
 desires, and the case is seen in all its help- 
 lessness ;- — ^you become desperate of salvation in 
 one w^ay, and you are led to look for it in an- 
 other way. The question, whether salvation is 
 of grace or of works, receives its most decisive 
 settlement ; — when thus driven away from one 
 term of the ahernative, you are compelled, as 
 your only resource, to the other term. You feel 
 that nothing else will do for your acceptance 
 wdth God, but your acceptance of the offered 
 Saviour, You stand at the foot of the cross, — 
 you make an absolute surrender of yourself to 
 the terms of the gospel. 
 
 And we know not a more blissful or a more 
 memorable event, in tlie history of the human 
 soul, than, when convinced that there is no other 
 righteousness than in the merits, and no other 
 sanctification than in the grace of the Saviour, it 
 henceforth glories only in his cross; and now, 
 that every other expedient of reformation has 
 been tried, and failed of its accomphshment, it 
 takes to the remaining one of crying mightily to 
 God, and pressing, at a throne of grace, the sup- 
 plication of the Psalmist, " Create a clean heart, 
 and renew a right spirit within me." 
 
 One thing is certain ; you are welcome, at this 
 moment, to lay hold of the righteousness of 
 God, in Christ Jesus ; you are welcome, at diis 
 moment, to themse of his prevailing name, 'm 
 
SERMON XIII. 3.3*3 
 
 your prayers to the Father; you are welcome, at 
 this moment, to the plea of his meritorious obe- 
 dience, and of his atoning death ; and you are 
 welcome, at. this moment, to the promise of the 
 Spirit, given unto all who believe, whereby the 
 enmity of their carnal minds will be done 
 away, — God will no longer be regarded with 
 antipathy and disgust, — he will appear in the 
 face of Jesus Christ as a reconciled Father, — 
 he will pour upon you the spirit of adoption, — 
 you will walk before him without fear, — and 
 those bonds being loosed, wherewith you were 
 formerly held, you will yield to him the willing 
 obedience of those whose hearts are enlarged, 
 and who run, with delight, in the way of his 
 commandments. 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO DISSOLVE THE 
 ENMITY OF THE HUMAN HEART AGAINST GOD. 
 
 Ethes. II. 16. 
 " Having slain the enmity thereby." 
 
 n. We shall now consider how it is that the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ, suits its application to 
 this great moral disease. 
 
 The necessity of some singular expedient, for 
 restoring the love of God to the alienated heart 
 of man, will appear from the utter impossibility 
 of bringing this about by any direct application 
 of authority whatever. For, do you think that 
 the delivery of the law of love, in his hearing, 
 as a positive and indispensable enactment com- 
 ing forth from the legislature of heaven, will do 
 it ? You may as well pass a law, making it im- 
 perative upon him to delight in pain, and to 
 feel comfort on a bed of torture ? Or, do you 
 think, that you will ever give a practical esta- 
 blishment to the law of love, by surrounding it 
 with accumulated penalties.^ This may irritate, 
 
SERMON XIV. 335 
 
 or it may terrify,— but for the purpose of beget- 
 ting any thing like attachment, one may as well 
 think of lashing another into tender regard for 
 him. Or, do you think, that the terrors of the 
 coming vengeance will ever incline a human 
 being to love the God who threatens him? 
 Powerful as these terrors are, in persuading man 
 to turn from the evil of his ways, — they most 
 assuredly do not form the artillery by which 
 the heart of man can be carried. They draw 
 not forth a single affection, but the affection of 
 fear. They never can charm the human bo- 
 som into a feeling of attachment to God. And 
 it goes to prove the necessity of some singular 
 expedient, for restoring man to fellowship with 
 his Maker ; that the only obedience on which this 
 fellowship can be perpetuated, is an obedience 
 which no threatenings can force, — to which no 
 warnings of displeasure can reclaim, — which all 
 the solenm proclamations of law and justice can- 
 not carry, — and all the terrors and severities of 
 a sovereignty resting on power, as its only foun- 
 dation, can never subdue. The utterance H)( 
 the words. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, 
 or perish everlastingly, can no more open the 
 shut and alienated heart of man, than it can 
 open a gate of iron. Multiply these arguments 
 of terror as you may, — arm them with tenfold 
 energy, and make them to fall in thunder on the 
 sinner's ears, — tell him of the God of judg- 
 ment, and manifest to him the frown of his an- 
 
336 SERMON XIV. 
 
 gry countenance, — lay before him the grim 
 aspect of his impending death, and spread a 
 deeper mantle of despair over the vast field of 
 that eternity which is on the other side of it ; — 
 You may disquiet him, and right that he should 
 be so, — you may prevail on him to give up many 
 evil doings, and right that the whole urgency 
 of the coming wrath should be employed to 
 make him give them up immediately, — you may 
 set him a trembling at the power of God, and 
 better this than spending his guilty career, in 
 thoughtlessness and unconcern, about the great 
 Lawgiver ; — but where, in the midst of all this, 
 shall we find obedience to the very first and 
 greatest commandment of the law ? Has this 
 obedience been yet so much as entered on ? Has 
 love to God so much as reached the infancy of 
 its existence, in that heart which is now begin- 
 ning to be agitated by its terrors ? Amid all the 
 bitterness of remorse, and all the fearful looking 
 for of judgment, and all the restless anxieties 
 of conscious guilt, and anticipated vengeance, 
 teU us, if a single particle of tenderness towards 
 God, has any place in this restless and despair- 
 ing bosom ? Tell us, if it act as an element at 
 all, in this wild war of turbulence and disorder r 
 Or, has it yet begun to dawn upon the mind, 
 and spread its salutary and composing charm 
 over that dark scene of conflict, under which 
 many a sinner has to sustain the burden of the 
 wearisome nights, that are appointed to him? 
 
SERMON XIV. 337 
 
 You may seek for love to God throughout a]l 
 the chambers of his heart, and seek in vain. 
 The man may be acting such reformations as 
 he is driven to, and may be clothing himself 
 in such visible decencies, as he feels himself 
 compelled to put on, and may be labouring 
 away at the drudgery of such observances as 
 he thinks will give him relief from the cor- 
 rosions of that undying worm, which never 
 ceases to goad him with its reproaches ; but as 
 to the love of God, there is as grim and determin- 
 ed an exclusion of this principle as ever, — that 
 avenue to his heart, has never been unlocked, 
 through which it might be made to find its way, 
 — every former argument, so far from having 
 dissolved the barrier, has only served to rivet 
 and to make it more unmoveable. And the dif- 
 ficulty still lies upon us, — how are we to deposit 
 in the heart of man, the only right principle of 
 obedience to God, — and to lead him onward in 
 the single way of a pure, and spiritual, and sub- 
 stantial repentance ? 
 
 This, then, is a case of difficulty, and, in the 
 Bible, God is said to have lavished all the riches 
 of his unsearchable wisdom on the business of 
 managing it. No wonder that to his angels it 
 appeared a mystery, and that they desired to 
 look into it. It appears a matter of direct and 
 obvious facility to intimidate man, — and to bring 
 his body into a forced subordination to all the 
 requirements. But the great matter was, hon 
 
 4S 
 
338 SERMON XIV. 
 
 to attach man, — how to work in him a liking to 
 God, and a relish for his character ;— or, in other 
 words, how to communicate to human obedience, 
 that principle, without which, it is no obedience 
 at all, — to make him serve God, because he lov^d 
 him ; and to run in the way of all his command- 
 ments, because this was the thing in which he 
 greatly delighted himself. To lay upon us the 
 demand of satisfaction for his violated law, could 
 not do it. To press home the claims of justice 
 upon any sense of authority within us, could not 
 do it. To bring forward, in threatening array, 
 the terrors of his judgment, and of his power 
 against us, could not do it. To unveil tte 
 glories of that throne where he sitteth in equity, 
 and manifest to his guilty creatures the awful 
 inflexibilities of his truth and righteousness, 
 could not do it. To look out from the cloud of 
 vengeance, and trouble our dai'kened souls as he 
 did those of the Egyptians of old, with the as- 
 pect of a menacing Deity, couM not do it. To 
 spread the field of an undone eternity before 
 us, and tell us of those dreary abodes where 
 each criminal hath his bed in hell, and the cen^ 
 turies of despair which pass over him are not 
 counted, because there no seasons roll, and the 
 unhappy victims of the tribulation, and tlfC 
 wrath, and the anguish, know, that for the 
 mighty burden of the sufferings which weigh 
 upon them, there is no end, and no mitigation ; 
 this prospect appalling as it is, and coming home 
 
SERMON XIV. 339 
 
 upon the belief with all the characters of the 
 most immutable certainty, could not do it. The 
 affections of the inner man remain as unmoved 
 as ever, under the successive and repeated in- 
 fluence of all these dreadful applications. There 
 is not one of them, which, instead of conciliat- 
 ing, does not stir up a principle of resistance ; 
 and, subject any human creature to the treat- 
 ment of them all, and to nothing else, and he 
 may tremble at God, and shrink from the con- 
 templation of God, and feel an overpowering 
 awe at the thought of God, when that thought 
 visits him ; — but we maintain, that not one par- 
 ticle of influence has been sent into his heart, 
 to make him love God. Under such appli- 
 cations as these, we can conceive the creature, 
 gathering a new energy from despair, and mus- 
 tering up a stouter defiance than ever, to the 
 God who threatens him. Strange contest be- 
 tween the thing formed and him who formed it ; 
 —but we see it exhibited among the determined 
 votaries of wickedness in life; and it is the 
 very contest which gives its moral aspect to hell 
 throughout all eternity. There, God reigns in 
 vindictive majesty, and there, every heart of 
 every outcast, sheathed in impenetrable hard- 
 ness, mutters its blasphemies against him. O 
 hideous and revolting spectacle ! and how awful 
 to think, that the unreclaimed sons of profligacy, 
 who pour along our streets, and throng our mar- 
 kets, and form the fearful majority in almost 
 
346 SERMON XIV. 
 
 every chamber of business, and in every work- 
 shop of industry, are thither speeding their in- 
 fatuated way ! What a wretched field of contem- 
 plation is around us, when we see on every side 
 of it the mutual encouragement, — the ever-ply- 
 ing allurements, — the tadt, though effectual and 
 well understood, combination, sustaining, over 
 the whole face of this alienated world, a firm 
 and systematic rebellion against God ! We are 
 not offering an exaggerated picture when we say, 
 that within reach of the walk of a single hour, 
 there are thousands, and thousands more, who 
 have cast away from them the authority of God ; 
 and who have been nerved by all his threaten- 
 ings into a more determined attitude of wick- 
 edness ; and who giory in their unprincipled dis- 
 sipations ; and who, without one sigh at the mov- 
 ing spectacle of ruined innocence, will, in the 
 hearing of companions younger than them- 
 f selves, scatter their pestilential levities around 
 them, and care not though the hope of parents, 
 and the yet unvitiated dehcacy of youth, shall 
 wither and expire under the contagion of their 
 ruffian example ; and will patronize every step of 
 that progress which leads from one depravity to 
 another, till their ill fated proselyte made as 
 much the child of hell as themselves, shall 
 share in that common ruin which, in the great 
 day of the revelation of the righteous judgment 
 of God, will come forth from the storehouse of 
 his wrath, in one mighty torrent, on the heads 
 
SERMON XIV. 34) 
 
 of all who boast of their iniquity. We have 
 now touched on the limits of a subject of 
 which half its horrors are untold ; but through 
 which, the minister, of the counsels of heaven 
 must clear his intrepid way, in spite of all its 
 painfulness. We will not pursue it at present, 
 but neither will we count the digression out 
 of place — should a single parent among you be 
 led, from what we have now uttered, to have 
 over his children with a godly jealousy, and not 
 to suffer those, for whose eternity he is so deep- 
 ly responsible, to take their random direction 
 through society, just where the prospects of busi- 
 ness, and of worldly advantage, may chance to 
 carry them ; to calculate on the possibilities of 
 moral corruption, as well as on the possibilities 
 of lucrative employment ; to look well to expo- 
 sures and acquaintances, and hours of social 
 entertainment, as well as to the common-place 
 object of a situation in the world. And when 
 you talk of a good line for your children, 
 just think a little more of the line that lead- 
 eth to eternity, and have a care lest you be 
 the instrument of putting them on such a path 
 of danger, that it shall only be by the very 
 rarest miracle of grace, that your helpless young 
 can be kept from falling, or be renewed again 
 into repentance. 
 
 But the difficulty in question still remains 
 unresolved. How then is this regeneration to 
 be wrought, if no threatenings can work it, — if 
 
342 SERMON XIV. 
 
 no terrors of judgment can soften the heart into 
 that love of God, which forms the chief feature 
 of repentance, — if all the direct applications of 
 law and of righteous authority, and of its tre- 
 mendous and immutable sanctions, so far from 
 attaching man in tenderness to his God, have 
 only the effect of impressing a violent recoil 
 upon all his affections, and, by the hardening 
 influence of despair, of stirring up in his bosom 
 a more violent antipathy than ever? Will the 
 high and solemn proclamations of a menacing 
 Deity not do it ? This is not the way in which 
 the heart of man can be carried. He is so consti- 
 tuted, that the law of love can never never be 
 established within him by the engine of terror ; 
 and here is the barrier to this regeneration on the 
 part of man. But if a threat of justice cannot 
 do it, will an act of forgiveness do it ? This 
 again is not the way in which God can admit 
 the guilty to acceptance. He is so constituted, 
 that his truth cannot be trampled upon, and 
 his government cannot be despoiled of its au- 
 thority, and its sanctions cannot, with impu- 
 nity, be defied, and every solemn utterance of 
 the Deity cannot but find its accomplishment, 
 in such a way as may vindicate his glory, and 
 make the whole creation he has formed stand in 
 awe of its Almighty Sovereign. And here is 
 another barrier on the part of God ; and that 
 economy of redemption, in which a dead and 
 undiscerning world see no skilfulness to admire. 
 
SERMON XIV. 3a 
 
 and no feature of graciousness to allure them, 
 is so planned, in the upper counsels of heaven, 
 that it maketh known, to principalities and 
 power, the manifold wisdom of Him who de- 
 vised it. The men of this infidel generation, 
 whose every faculty is so bedimmcd by the 
 grossness of sense, that they cannot lay hold of 
 the realities of faith, and cannot appreciate them, 
 — to them the barriers we have now insisted 
 on which lie in the way of man, taking God in- 
 to his love, and of God taking man into his ac- 
 ceptance, may appear to be so many faint and 
 shadowy considerations, of which they feel not 
 the significancy ; but, to the pure and intellec- 
 tual eye of angels, they are substantial obstacles, 
 and are Mighty to Save had to travel in the 
 greatness of his strength, in order to move them 
 away. The Son of God descended from hea- 
 ven, and he took upon him the nature of man, 
 and he suffered in his stead, and he consented 
 that the whole burden of offended justice should 
 fall upon him, and he bore in his own body on 
 the tree, the weight of all those accomplishments 
 by which his Father behoved to be glorified, 
 and after having magnified the law, and made 
 it honourable, by pouring out his soul unto the 
 death for us, he went up on high, and by an 
 arm of everlasting strength, he has levelled that 
 wall of partition w hich lay across the path oi 
 acceptance ; and thus it is that the barrier on 
 the patt of God is done away, and he, with 
 
SU SERMON XIV. 
 
 untarnished glory, can dispense forgiveness over 
 the whole extent of a guilty creation, because 
 he carl be just, while he is the justifier of them 
 who believe in Jesus. 
 
 And if the barrier, on the part of God, is thus 
 moved aside, why not the barrier on the part of 
 man ? Does not the wisdom of redemption shew 
 itself here also ? Does it not embrace some skil- 
 ful contrivance, by which it penetrates those 
 mounds that beset the human heart, and ward 
 the entrance of the principle of love away from 
 it, and which all the direct applications of ter- 
 ror and authority, have only the effect of fixing 
 more immoveably upon their basis ? Yes it does, 
 — for it changes the aspect of the Deity towards 
 man ; and were man only to have faith in the 
 announcements of the gospel, so as to see God 
 with the eye of his mind under this new aspect, 
 — ^love to God would spring up in his heart, as 
 the unfailing consequence. Let man see God as 
 he sets himself forth in this wonderful revelation, 
 and let him believe the reality of what he sees; and 
 he cannot but love the Being he is employed in 
 contemplating. Without this gospel, he may see 
 him to be a God of justice ; but he cannot do 
 this without seeing the frown of severity direct- 
 ed against himself, a wretched offender : With 
 this gospel, he sees the full burden of violated 
 justice borne away from him ; and God stands 
 before him unrobed of all his severities, and 
 tenderly inviting him to draw near through that 
 
SERMON XIV. 345 
 
 blood of atonement which was shed, the just for 
 the unjust, to bring the sinner unto God. With- 
 out this gospel, he may see the truth oi* God ; 
 but he sees it pledged, to the fulfilment of die 
 most awful thrcatenings against him : With this 
 gospel, he sees the full weight of all these ac- 
 complishments, resdng on the head of the great 
 sacrifice ; and God's truth is now fully embark- 
 ed on the most cheering assurances of pardon, 
 on the most liberal invitations of good will, 
 on the most exceeding great and precious pro- 
 mises. Without this gospel, he may see the 
 government of God leaning on the pillars of that 
 immutability which upholds it; but this very 
 immutability is to him the sentence of despair ; 
 and how can he love that face, on which are 
 stamped the characters of a stern and vindictive 
 majesty? With this gospel, the face of God 
 stands legibly revealed to him in other charac- 
 ters. That law which, resting on the solemn 
 authority of its firm and unalterable require- 
 ments, demanded a fulfilment, up to the last jot 
 and tittle of it, has been magnified, and has been 
 made honourable, by one illustrious sufferer, who 
 put forth the greatness of his suength, in that 
 dai-k hour of the travail of his soul, when he bore 
 the burden of all its penalties. That wrath 
 which should have been discharged on the 
 guilty millions he died for, was all concentred 
 upon him, who took upon himself the chastise- 
 ment of our peace, and on that day of myst^- 
 
 44 
 
346 SERMON XIV. 
 
 rious agony, drank, to the very dregs, the cap 
 of our expiation. And God, who planned the 
 whole work of this wonderful redemption, — 
 who in love to a guilty world sent his Son a- 
 mongst us; to accomplish it, — God, who rather 
 than lose his alienated creatm-es, as he could 
 not strip his eternal throne of a single attribute 
 that supported it, awoke the sword of vengeance 
 against his fellow, that on him the truth and the 
 justice of the Deity might receive their most il- 
 lustrious vindication — God, who, out of Christ, 
 sits surrounded with all the darkness of unap- 
 proachable majesty, is now God in Christ, re- 
 conciling the world unto himself, and not im- 
 puting unto them their trespasses; his tender 
 mercy is now free to rejoice amid all the glory 
 of his other bright and untarnished perfections, 
 and he pours the expression of this tenderness 
 with an unsparing hand, over the whole extent 
 of his sinful creation — and he lets himself down 
 to the language of a beseeching supplicant, 
 praying that each and every one of us might 
 be reconciled unto him — and putting on a win- 
 ning countenance of invitation to the guiltiest 
 of us all, he tells us, that if we only come to him 
 through the appointed mediator, he will blot out 
 as with a thick cloud, our transgressions— and 
 that, as if carried away to a land that was not 
 inhabited, he will make no more mention of 
 them. 
 And thus it is, that the goodness of God de- 
 
SERMON XIV. 347 
 
 Stroyeth the enmity of the human heart. When 
 every other argument fails, this, if perceived 
 by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and per- 
 suasive way through every barrier of resistance. 
 Try to approach the heart of man by the instm- 
 ments of terror and of authority, and it will dis- 
 dainfully repel you. There is not one of you 
 skilled in the management ofhuman nature, who 
 does not perceive, that though this may be a 
 way of working on the other principles of our 
 constitution, — of working on the fears of man, 
 or on his sense of interest, this is not the way 
 of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the at- 
 tachments of his heart. Such a way may force, 
 or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear ; 
 and after all the threatening array of such an 
 influence as this, is brought to bear upon man, 
 there is not one particle of service it can ex- 
 tort from him, but what is all rendered in the 
 spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. 
 Now, this is not the service which prepares for 
 heaven. This is not the service which assimi- 
 lates men to angels. This is not the obedience 
 of those glorified spirits, whose every affection 
 harmonizes with their every performance ; and 
 the very essence of whose piety consists of de- 
 light in God, and the love they bear to him. 
 To bring up man to such an obedience as 
 this, his heart behoved to be approached in 
 a peculiar way; and no such way is to be 
 found, but within the limits of the Christian 
 
/■ 
 
 348 SERMON XIV. 
 
 revelation. There alone you see God, without 
 injury to his other attributes, plying the heart 
 of man with the irresistible argument of kind- 
 ness. There alone do you see the -great 
 Lord of heaven and of earth, setting himself 
 forth to the most worthless and the most wan^ 
 dering of his children, — putting forth his 
 own hand to the work of healing the breach 
 which sin had made between them, — telling 
 him that his word could not be set aside, and 
 his threatenings could not be mocked, and liis 
 justice could not be defied and trampled on, 
 and that it was not possible for his perfections 
 to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the 
 creation he had thrown around him; but that 
 all this was provided for, and not a single crea- 
 ture within the compass of the universe he had 
 formed, could now say, that forgiveness to man 
 was degrading to the authority of God, and that 
 by the very act of atonement, which poured a 
 glory over all the high attributes of his charac- 
 ter, his mercy might now burst forth without 
 limit, and without controul, upon a guilty world, 
 and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in 
 the signt of all its families. 
 
 Let the sinner, then, look to God through the 
 medium of such a revelation ; and the sight 
 wiiich meets him there, may well tame the ob- 
 stinacy of that heart, which had wrapped itself 
 up in impenetrable hardness against the force of 
 
SERMON XIV. 349 
 
 every other consideration. Now that the storm 
 of the Almighty's wrath has been discharged 
 upon hm who bore the burden of the world's 
 atonement, he has turned his throne of glory 
 into a throne of grace, and cleared away from 
 the pavilion of his residence, all the darkness, 
 which encompassed it. The God who dwelleth 
 there, is God in Christ ; and the voice he sends 
 from it, to this dark and rebellious province of his 
 mighty empire, is a voice of the most beseeching 
 tenderness. Good will to men is the announce- 
 ment with which his messengers come fraught 
 to a guilty world ; and, since the moment in 
 which it burst upon mortal ears from the peace- 
 ful canopy of heaven, may the ministers of sal- 
 vation take it up, and go round with it among 
 all the tribes and individuals of the species. — 
 Such is the real aspect of God towards you. 
 He cannot bear that his alienated cliildren 
 should be finally and everlastingly away from 
 him. He feels for you all the longing of a pa- 
 rent bereaved of his offspring. To woo you 
 back again unto himself, he scatters among you 
 the largest and the most liberal assurances, and 
 with a tone of imploring tenderness, does he 
 say to one and to all of you, " Turn ye, turn ye, 
 why will you die ?" He has no pleasure in your 
 death. He does not want to glorify himself by 
 the destruction of any one of you. " Look to me 
 all ye ends of the earth, and be saved," is the 
 wide and the generous announcement, by which 
 
3S0 SERMON XIV. 
 
 he would recal, from the very outermost Hmits of 
 his sinful creation, the most worthless and pol- 
 luted of those who have wandered away from 
 him. Now give us a man who perceives, with 
 the eye of his mind, the reality of all this, and 
 you give us a man in possession of the prin- 
 ciple of faith. Give us a man in possession of 
 this faith; and his heart shielded, as it were, 
 against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is sof- 
 tened and subdued, and resigns its every affec- 
 tion at the moving spectacle of a beseeching 
 Deity ; and thus it is that faith manifests the at- 
 tribute which the Bible assigns to it, of work- 
 ing by love. Give us a man in possession of 
 this love ; and animated as he is, with the living 
 principle of that obedience, where the willing 
 and delighted consent of the inner man goes 
 along with the performance of the outer man, 
 his love manifests the attribute which the Bi- 
 ble assigns to it, where it says, " This is the 
 love of God, that ye keep his commandments." 
 And thus it is, amid the fruiriessness of every 
 other expedient, when power threatened to 
 crush the heart which it could not soften, — 
 when authority lifted its voice, and laid on man 
 an enactment of love which it could not carry, 
 — when terror shot its arrows, and they dropped 
 ineffectual from that citadel of the human affec- 
 tions, which stood proof against the impression 
 of eveiy one of them, — when wrath mustered 
 up its ^ppalluig severities, and filled that bosom 
 
SERMON XIV. 351 
 
 with despaii- which it could not fill with the 
 warmth of a confiding attachment, — then the 
 kindness of an inviting God was brought to beai* 
 on the heart of man, and got an opening through 
 all its mysterious avenues. Goodness did what 
 the nakedness of power could not do. It found 
 its way through all the intricacies of the human 
 constitution, and there, depositing the right 
 principle of repentance, did it establish the 
 alone effectual security for the right purposes, 
 and the right fruits of repentance* 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 THE EVILS OF FALSE SECURITY, 
 
 Jeremiah vi. 14. 
 
 '" They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my 
 people slightly, saying, Peace, Peace ; when there is no 
 peace." 
 
 We must all have remarked, on what a slight 
 and passing consideration people will dispose 
 of a question which relates to the interest of 
 their eternity; and how strikingly this stands 
 contrasted with the very deep, and earnest, and 
 long sustained attention, which they bestow on 
 a question that relates to their interest, or their 
 fortune, in this world. Ere they embark, for ex- 
 ample, on an enterprize of trade, they will look 
 at all the sides, and all the possibilities of the 
 speculation ; and every power of thought within 
 them, will be put to its busiest exercise, and 
 they will enter upon it with much fearfulness, 
 and they will feel an anxious concern in every 
 step, and every new evolution, of such an under- 
 taking. Compare this with the very loose and 
 summary way in which they make up their minds. 
 
SERMON XV. 353 
 
 ftbout the chance of happiness in another work!. 
 See at how easy a rate they will bo satisfied with 
 some maxim of security, the utterance of which 
 serves as a bar against all further prosecution 
 of the subject. Behold the use they make of 
 some hastily assumed principle in religion, — 
 not for the purpose of fastening their minds 
 upon it, but for the purpose, in fact, of hurrying 
 their minds away from it. For it must be ob- 
 served of the people to whom we allude, that, in 
 spite of all their thoughtlessness about the affairs 
 of the soul, they are not altogether without some 
 opinion on the matter ; and in which opinion 
 there generally is comprised all the theology of 
 which they are possessed. Without some such 
 opinion, even the most regardless of men might 
 feel themselves in a state of restlessness ; and 
 therefore it is, however seldom they are visited 
 with any thought about eternity, and however 
 gently this thought touches them, and however 
 quickly it passes away, to be replaced by some 
 of the more urgent vanities and interests of 
 time, yet, with most men, there is something 
 like an actual making up of their minds, on this 
 awfully important subject. There is a settle- 
 ment they have come to about it, which, gener- 
 ally speaking, serves them to the end of their 
 days ; — and on the strength of which, tliere are 
 many who can hush w ithin them, every alarm 
 of conscience, and repel from without tlicuj, the 
 whole force of a preacher's demonstration, and 
 
 4'^ 
 
354 SERMON XV. 
 
 all that power of disquietude which lies in Ws 
 faithful and impressive warnings. 
 
 We speak in reference to a very numerous 
 set of individuals, among the upper and mid- 
 dling classes of society. There is a class of 
 what may be called slender and sentimental 
 religionists, who do profess a reverence for the 
 matter, and maintain many of its outward decen- 
 cies, and are visited with occasional thoughts, 
 and occasional feelings of tenderness about 
 death, and duty, and eternity, and would be 
 shocked at the utterance of an infidel opinion ; 
 and with all these symptoms of a religious in- 
 clination about them, have their minds very 
 comfortably made up, and altogether free from 
 any apprehension, either of present wrath, or of 
 coming vengeance. Now, on examining the 
 ground of their tranquillity, we are at a loss to 
 detect a single ingredient of that peace and joy 
 in beUeving, which we read of among the 
 Christians of the New Testament. It is not 
 that Christ is set forth a propitiation for their 
 sins, — it is not that they stagger not at the 
 promise of God, because of unbelief, — ^it is 
 not that the love of him is shed abroad in their 
 hearts, by the Holy Ghost, — it is not that they 
 carry along with them any consciousness what- 
 ever, of a growing conformity to the image of 
 the Saviour, — it is not that their calling and 
 their election are made sure to them, by the 
 successful diligence with which they are cul- 
 
SERMON XV. 355 
 
 tivating the various accomplishments of the 
 Christian character ;--therc is not one of these 
 ingredients, we will venture to say, which enters 
 into the satisfaction that many feel with their 
 own prospects, and into the complacency they 
 have in their own attainments, and into their 
 opinion, that God is looking to them with in- 
 dulgence and friendship. With most of them, 
 there is not only an ignorance, but a positive 
 disgust, about these things. They associate 
 with them the charges of methodism, and mys- 
 ticism, and fanaticism ; and meanwhile cherish 
 in their own hearts, a kind of impregnable con- 
 fidence, resting entirely on some other founda- 
 tion. 
 
 We beheve the real cause of their tran- 
 quillity to be, just that eternity is not seen 
 nearly enough, or urgently enough, to disturb 
 them. It stands so far away on the back 
 ground of their contemplation, that they are 
 almost entirely taken up with the intervening 
 objects. Any glimpse they have of the futurity 
 which lies on the other side of time, is so faint, 
 and so occasional, that its concerns never come 
 to them with the urgency of a matter on hand. 
 It is not so much because they think in a par- 
 ticular way on this topic, that they feel them- 
 selves to be at peace. It is rather, because they 
 think so little of it. Still, however, they do 
 have a transient and occasional thought, and 
 it is all on the side of tranquillity ; and couJd 
 
S56 SERMON XV. 
 
 this thought be exposed as a minister of de- 
 ceitful complacency to the heart, it may have 
 the effect of working in it a salutary alarm, 
 and of making the possessor of it see the naked- 
 ness of his condition, and of undermining every 
 other trust but a trust in the offered salvation 
 of the gospel, and of unsettling the blind and 
 easy confidence of his former days, and of 
 prompting him with the question, " What shall 
 I do to be saved ?" and of leading him to try 
 this question by the light of revelation, and to 
 prosecute it to a scriptural conclusion, till he 
 came to the answer of, " Believe in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 What is the way, then, in which they do ac- 
 tually make up their minds upon this subject ? 
 There is, in the first place, a pretty general ad- 
 mission, that we are sinners, though along with 
 this, there is a disposition to palliate the enor- 
 mity of sin, and to gloss it over with the gentle 
 epithet of an infirmity. It is readily allowed, 
 then, that we have our infirmities ; and then to 
 make all right, and secure, and comfortable, the 
 sentiment with which they bring the matter 
 round again, is that, though we have our infir- 
 mities, God is a merciful God, and he will over- 
 look them. This vague, and general, and in- 
 distinct apprehension of the attribute of mercy 
 is the anchor of their hope ; not a very sure and 
 'Steadfast one certainly, but just as sure and as 
 
SERMON XV. 357 
 
 steadfast, as, in their peaceful state of unconcern, 
 they have any demand for. A vessel in smooth 
 water needs not be very strongly fastened in her 
 moorings; and really any convictions of sin they 
 have, agitate them so gently, that a very slen- 
 der principle indeed, uttered occasionally by 
 the mouth, and with no distinct or perceptible 
 hold upon the heart, is enough to quiet and sub- 
 due all that is troublesome within them. A 
 slight hurt needs but a slight remedy, and how- 
 ever virulent the disease may be, jet, if the pa- 
 tient be but gently alarmed, a gentle applica- 
 tion is enough to pacify him in the mean time. 
 Now, a tasteful and a tender sentiment about 
 the goodness of God, is just such an applica- 
 tion. He w^ill not be severe upon our weak- 
 nesses; he will not cast a glance of stern and 
 unrelenting indignation upon us. It is true, 
 that there is to be met with, among the vilest 
 dregs and refuse of society, a degree of pro- 
 fligacy, for which it would really be too much 
 to expect forgiveness. The use of hell is for 
 the punishment of such gross and enormous 
 w^ickedness as this. But the people who are so 
 very depraved, and so very shocking, stand far 
 beneath the place which we occupy in the scale 
 of character. We, with our many amiable, and 
 good, and neighbourlike points and accomplish- 
 ments, are fair and benefitting subjects for the 
 kindness of God. When w^e err, we shall he- 
 
358 SERMON XV. 
 
 take ourselves to a trust in that indulgence, 
 which gives to our religion the aspect of so 
 much cheerfulness ; and we will school down all 
 that is disquieting, by a sentiment of confidence 
 in that mercy which is soothing to our hearts, 
 and which we delight to hear expatiated upon, 
 in terms of tastefulness, by the orators of a 
 genteel and cultivated piety. 
 
 Under this loose system of confidence, then, 
 by which the peace of so many a sinner is up- 
 held, it is the general mercy of God on which 
 he rests. I shall, therefore, in the first place, 
 endeavour to prove the vanity of such a confi- 
 dence ; and, in the second place, the evils of it. 
 
 I. There is one obvious respect, in which this 
 mercy that is so slenderly spoken of, and so 
 vaguely trusted in, is not in unison with truth ; 
 and that is, it is not the mercy which has been 
 made the subject of an actual offer from God to 
 man, in the true message that he has been 
 pleased to deliver to the world. In this mes- 
 sage, God makes a free offer of his mercy, no 
 doubt ; but he offers it on a particular footign, 
 and on that footmg only, will he have it to be 
 received. Along with the revelation he makes 
 of his attribute of mercy, he bids us look to the 
 particular way, in which he chooses that attri- 
 bute to be put forth. The man who steps for- 
 ward to relieve you of your debts, by an act of 
 gratuitous kindness, may surely reserve the pri- 
 vilege of doing it in his own way ; and whether 
 
SERMON XV. 3r,9 
 
 it be by a present in goods, or by a present in 
 money, or by an order upon a third i)erson, or 
 by the appointment of one whom he makes the 
 agent of his beneficence, and whom he asks you 
 to correspond with and to draw upon, it would 
 surely be most preposterous in you to quarrel 
 with his generosity, because it would have been 
 more to your taste, had it come to you through 
 a different channel of conveyance. He has a 
 fair right of insisting upoa his own way of it \ 
 and if you will not acquiesce in this way, and he 
 leaves you under your burden, you have nothing 
 to complain of You might have liked it better, 
 had he authorised you to draw upon himself, 
 rather than on the agent he has fixed upon. 
 But no ; he has his reasons, and he persists in 
 his own way of it, and you must either go along 
 with this way, or throw yourself out of the be- 
 nefit of his generosity altogether. It is con- 
 ceivable that, in spite of all this, you may be so 
 very perverse as to draw upon himself, instead 
 of drawing upon the authorized agent. Well, 
 the effect is, just that your draft is dishonoured, 
 and your debt still lies upon you ; and you, hy 
 your wilful resistance to the plan of relief laid 
 down, are left to remain imder the full weighi 
 of your embarrassments. 
 
 And so of God. He may, and he actual I \ 
 has stepped forward, to relieve us from thai 
 debt of sin under which we lie. But Jie has 
 taken his own way of it. He has not left ns Uy 
 
360 SERMON XV. 
 
 dictate the matter to him, — but he himself has 
 found out a ransom. He offers us eternal hfe ; 
 but he tells us where this is to be found, even in 
 his Son, and he bids us look unto him, and be 
 saved ; and he says, that he who hath the Son 
 hath life, and that he who believeth not the 
 Son, the wrath of God abideth on him. To 
 restrain, as it were, our immediate approaches 
 to himself, he reveals an agent, a Mediator be- 
 tween God and man,— and he lets us know, 
 that no one cometh unto the Father, but by 
 him. He makes a free oflfer of salvation, — but 
 it is in and through Jesus Christ, to whom the 
 whole revealed word of God directs our eye, as 
 the prime agent in the recovery of a guilty 
 world. To say that we have our infirmities, 
 but God is merciful, is like drawing direct upon 
 God himself. But God tells us that he will 
 not be so drawn upon. He chooses, and has 
 he not the right of choosing, to bestow all his 
 favours upon a guilty world, in and through his 
 Son Christ Jesus ? If you choose to object to 
 this way, you must just abide by the conse- 
 quences. The offer is made. God sets him- 
 self forward as merciful. But he lets you know, 
 at the same time, the particular way in which 
 he chooses to be so. This way may be an 
 offence to you. You would perhaps have liked 
 better, had there been no Christ, no preaching 
 of his cross, nothing said about his cleansing, 
 and peace-speaking blood. — in a word, nothinsr 
 
SERMON XV. 361 
 
 of all that which forms the burden of metho- 
 distical sermons, and which, if met with in the 
 New Testament at all, is only to be found in 
 what you may think its dark and mystical pas- 
 sages. It would have been more congenial to 
 your taste, perhaps, had you been left to the 
 undisturbed enjoyment of your, own soothing 
 and elegant conceptions,— could you just have 
 gone direct to God himself, whom the eye of 
 your imagination had stripped of all tremen- 
 dous severity against sin, of all the pure and 
 holy jealousies of his nature, of all that is ma- 
 jestic in the high attributes of truth and righ- 
 teousness. A God singly possessed of tender- 
 ness, in virtue of which, he would smile conni- 
 vance at all our infirmities, and bend an in- 
 dulgent eye over the waywardness of a heart, 
 devoted with all its affections to the vanities 
 and pleasures of time, — this would be a God 
 highly suited to the taste and convenience of a 
 guilty world. But, alas ! there is no such God. 
 To trust in the mercy of such a Being as this, 
 is to lean ari a nonentity of your own imagina- 
 tion. It is to be led astray, by a fancy picture 
 of your own forming. There is no other God 
 to whom you can repair for mercy, but God in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and 
 not imputing unto them their trespasses. And 
 if you resist the preaching of Christ as foolish- 
 ness, — if you will not recognise 'him, but persist 
 in your hoping, arid your trusting, on the g«n- 
 
 46 
 
362 SERMON Xr, 
 
 eral ground that God is merciful, you are jusi 
 wrapping yourselves up in a delusive confidence^ 
 and pleasing yourselves with your own imagi^ 
 nation ; and the only real offer that ever was, or, 
 will be, made to sinful man, you are putting away 
 from you. The mercy upon vvhich you rest, is, 
 in disunion with truth. It is a spark of your 
 own kindling, and if you continue to walk in it, 
 it will lead you into a path of darkness, and be- 
 wilder you to your final undoing. 
 
 II. The evils of such a confidence as we hayo 
 been attempting to expose, are mainly reducible; 
 to two, which we shall consider in order. ^. .; 
 
 First, this delusive confidence casts an as-| 
 persion on the character of God. It would in-^ 
 flict a mutilation upon that character.^ Jft J4 
 confidence in such a mercy as would dethrone 
 the lawgiver, and establish the anarchy of a 
 wild misrule, over his fallen and .dishonoured 
 attributes. We may lightly t^ke up with, ^y 
 conception that God is all tenderness, and'no-^ 
 thing else, and thus try to accommodate the chaf 
 racter of the Eternal, to the standard of our own 
 convenience, and our own wislies. We, instea^^ 
 of looking to the immutability of the Godhead^ 
 and taking our fixed and perniaiieht lesson from 
 such a contemplation, may fancy of the God^. 
 head, that he is ever assuming*a new shape, and 
 a new character, according; to the frail and fluc- 
 tuating caprices pf human opinion. Instead of 
 God making man according to his pleasure, 
 
SERMON XV. 368 
 
 man would form God in the mould of his own 
 imagination. He forgets that, in the whole range 
 of existence, he can only meet with one ob- 
 ject who is inflexibly and everlastingly the same, 
 and that is God, — that he may sooner think of 
 causing the everlasting hills to recede from their 
 basis, than of causing an infringement on the 
 nature of the unalterable Deity, or on the de- 
 signs and maxims which support the method of 
 his administration,— that to assume a character 
 for him in our own mind, instead of learning 
 what the character is from himself, is in fact to 
 make the foolish thought of the creature, para- 
 mount to the eternal and immutable constitution 
 of the Creator. 
 
 Let us therefore give up our own conceptions, 
 and look steadily to that light in which God 
 hath actually put himself forth to us. He has 
 dealt out a variety of communications respect- 
 ing his own ever-during character and attri- 
 butes, to the children of men ; and he tells us, 
 that he is a God of truth, and that he is jealous 
 of his honour, and that he will not be mocked, 
 and that heaven and earth shall pass away, ere 
 any of his words pass away. Let us just attend 
 to some of these words. He who continues not 
 in the whole book of this law, is accursed. The 
 whole world is guilty before God. He will by 
 no means clear the guilty. Without shedding 
 of blood, there is no remission. These are the 
 words of God. He has put them into a record. 
 
364 SERMON XT. 
 
 Every one of us may read them, and compare 
 the sayings of God, with the doings of Godj 
 and if they do not correspond, the one with the 
 other, we may charge him with falsehood in the 
 face of his insulting enemies, and lift the voice 
 of mockery against him, and feel the triumph 
 which rebels feel, when they witness the timi- 
 dity of a feeble monarch, who does not, or dares 
 not, carry his threats into accomplishment. 
 And is it possible, that the throne of the eternal 
 God can rest on a basis so tottering, — ^or that, if 
 ever he shall descend to the manifestation of 
 mercy, he will not give the manifestation of his 
 truth and his righteousness along with it ? 
 
 Now, those who, without any reference to 
 Christ, find their way to comfort on the strength 
 of their own general confidence in God's mer- 
 cy, make no account whatever of his truth, or 
 his righteousness. What becomes of the threat- 
 enings of God ? What becomes of the immuta- 
 bihty of his purposes ? What becomes of the 
 unfailing truth of all his communications ? What 
 becomes of the solemnity of his warnings ? and 
 how is it possible to be at all impressed by 
 them, — if they are ever and anon done away by 
 a weak and capricious system of connivance ? 
 What becomes of the wide and everlasting dis- 
 tinctions, between obedience and sin ? What 
 becomes of the holiness of the Deity? What 
 becomes of reverence for his name, among the 
 wide circle of angels, and archangels, and sers- 
 
SERMON XV. 3G,0 
 
 phim, and cherubim, who have all heard his 
 awful proclamations against the children of ini- 
 quity,— if they see that any one of them may, 
 by a mere act of confidence in his mercy, turn 
 all that has been uttered against them into an 
 unmeaning parade ? Where, in a word, are all 
 those sanctions and securities which can alone 
 make the government of the Deity, to be a go- 
 vernment at all ? These are all questions which 
 the people to whom we allude, never think of 
 entertaining; nor do they feel the slightest 
 concern about them; and they count it quite 
 enough, if they can just work themselves up in- 
 to such a tolerable feeling of security, as that 
 they shall not be disturbed in the quiet enjoy- 
 ment of the good things of this life, which form 
 all in fact that their hearts long after, and which 
 if only permitted to retain in peace, they posi- 
 tively care not for the glory of God, or how it 
 shall be kept inviolate. This is not their affair. 
 The engrossing desire of their bosoms, is just a 
 selfish desire after their own ease; and the 
 strange preparation for that heaven, the unceas- 
 ing song of which is, Holy and righteous are thj 
 judgments, O thou King of Saints, is such a habit 
 of confidence, as lays prostrate all the majesty 
 of these- high and unchangeable perfections. 
 
 And yet if you examine these people closely, 
 you will obtain their consent to the position, 
 that there is a law, and that the human race are 
 bound to obedience, and that the authority of 
 
366 SERMON XV. 
 
 the law is supported by sanctions, and that the 
 truth, and justice, and dignity of the Supreme 
 Being, are involved in these sanctions being 
 enforced and executed. They do not refuse 
 the tenet, that man is an accountable subject, 
 and that God is a judge and a lawgiver. All 
 that we ask of them, then, is, to examine the 
 a,ccount which this subject has to render, and 
 they will find, in characters too glaring to be 
 resisted, that, with the purest and most perfect 
 individual amongst us, it is a wretched account 
 of guilt and of deficiency. That law, which 
 is held to be in full authority and operation 
 over us, has been most unquestionably violated. 
 Now, what is to be made of this ? Is the sub- 
 ject to rebel, and disobey every hour, and the 
 king, by a perpetual act of indulgence, to efface 
 every character of truth and dignity from his 
 government? Do this, and you depose the le- 
 gislator from his throne. You reduce the sanc- 
 tions of his law to a name, and a mockery. You 
 bring down the high economy of heaven, to the 
 standard of human convenience. You pull the 
 fabric of God's moral government to pieces ; 
 and unsubstantiate all the solemnity of his pro- 
 claimed sayings, — all the lofty annunciations 
 of the law, and of the prophets,— all that is told 
 of the mighty apparatus of the day of judg- 
 ^xient, — all that revelation points to, or con- 
 science can suggest, of a living and a reigning 
 God, who will not let himself down to be affront- 
 
SERMON XV. ;]G7 
 
 ed, or trampled upon hy tlie creatures ^vhom he 
 has formed. 
 
 They who, in profession, admit the truth of 
 God, and yet take comfort from his mercy, v ith- 
 oirt looking to him who bare in his own person, 
 the accomplishment of all the threatenings, do 
 in fact turn that truth into a lie. They who, 
 in profession, admit the justice of God, and yet 
 trust in the remission of their sins, without any 
 distinct acknowledgment of him on whom God 
 has laid the burden of their condemnation, do 
 in fact prove, that in their mouths justice is 
 nothing but an unmeaning articulation. They 
 who, in profession, admit the authority of those 
 great and unchanging principles, which preside 
 over the whole of God's moral administration, 
 and yet assign to him such a loose and easy 
 connivance at iniquity, as by a mere act of ten- 
 derness, to recal the every denunciation tliat he 
 had uttered agsiinst it, do in fact put forth a sa- 
 crilegious hand to the pillars of that immutabih- 
 ty, by which the government of creatiop is up- 
 held and perpetuated. Let them rest assured* 
 ihat there is no way of reconciliation, but such 
 a way as shJeUs all the holy, and pure, and in- 
 flexible attributes pf the, Divinity, from degra- 
 dation . and contempt. Out of that hidmg-place 
 which is made known in the gospel, all that is 
 jus^ and severe, and inflexible in the perfections 
 of ,Qod, stands in threatening array against every 
 son and daughter of the species. And if they 
 
368 SERiMON XV. 
 
 will not look to God as he sets himself forth t© 
 us in the New Testament,— if they refuse to 
 look unto him as God in Christ, reconciling the 
 world unto himself, and not imputing unto them 
 their trespasses, — if they set aside all that is said 
 about the blood of the everlasting covenant, and 
 the new and living way of access, and the man- 
 ner in which the mediatorship of Christ hath re- 
 paired all the indignities of sin, and shed a glory 
 over the truth and justice of the lawgiver, — if 
 they will still persist in looking to him through 
 another channel than that of his own revelation ; 
 he will persist in looking to them with the as- 
 pect of a stern and unappeased enemy. He 
 will not let down the honours of his inflexible 
 character, for the sake of those who refuse 
 his way of salvation. H^ will not fall in with 
 the delusions of those who profess to revere' 
 this character, and then shake the whole bur-^ ' 
 den of conscious guilt and infirmity away ^ 
 from them, by the presumption, that in some 
 way or other, the mercy of God will inter- 
 pose to defend them from the vengeance of 
 his more severe and unrelenting perfections." 
 The one and the only way, in which he dispen- 
 ses mercy, is through the atonement of Christ, — 
 and if your confidence be laid in any other quar- 
 ter, he will put that confidence to sh^me. He 
 will not accept the prayers of those, who can 
 thus make free with the unchangeable attributes 
 which belong to him. He will not descend 
 
SERMON XV. 369 
 
 with such to any intercourse of affection what- 
 ever. He will not own the approachos, nor 
 tvill he deal out any boon from the storehouse ol 
 his grace, to those who profess a general confi- 
 dence in his mercy — when, instead of a mercy 
 which guards, and dignifies, and keeps entire 
 the whole glory and character of God, it is a 
 mercy which beUes his word, which invades his 
 other perfections, which spoils the divine image 
 of its grandeur, which breaks up the whoio fa- 
 bric of his moral government, and would make 
 the throne of heaven the seat of an unmeaning 
 pageant, the throne of an insulted and degraded 
 sovereign. 
 
 The rehgion of nature, — or the rehgion of 
 unaided demonstration, — or the religion of our 
 most fashionable and philosophical schools, 
 leaves this question totally undisposed of; — and 
 at the same time, till the question be resolved, 
 all the hopes of the human soul are in a state of 
 the most fearful uncertainty. This religion 
 makes God the subject of its demonstrations, 
 and it draws out a list of attributes, and it 
 makes the justice of God to be one of these at- 
 tributes, and the placabihty of God to be ano- 
 ther of them, and it admits that it is in virtue 
 of the former perfection of his nature, that he 
 makes condemnation and punishment to rest on 
 the head of those who violate his law, and that it 
 is in virtue of the latter perfection that he looks 
 connivance, and extends pardon t^ such viola- 
 47 
 
570 SERMON XV- 
 
 tions. Now, the question which the disciples of 
 this religion have never settled, is, how to strike 
 the compromise between these attributes. They 
 cannot dissipate the cloud of mjsterj, which 
 hangs over the line of demarcation that is be- 
 tween them. They cannot tell in how far the 
 justice of God will insist on its exactions and 
 its claims, or what the extent of that disobe- 
 dience is, over which the placability of God will 
 spread the shelter of a generous forgiveness. 
 There is a dilemma here, out of which they can- 
 not unwarp themselves, — a question to which 
 they can give no other answer, than the ex- 
 pressive answer of their silence — and it is such 
 a silence, as leaves our every apprehension un- 
 quelled, and the whole burden of our unappeased 
 doubts and difficulties as insupportable as before. 
 What we demand is, that they shall lay down 
 the steady and unalterable position of that limit, 
 at which the justice of God, and the placability 
 of God, cease their respective encroachments 
 on each other. If they cannot tell this, they 
 can tell nothing that is of any consequence, 
 either to the purpose of comfort, or of direction. 
 The sinner wishes to know on which side of 
 this unknown and undetermined limit, his de- 
 gree of sinfulness is placed. He v/ishes to know 
 whether his offences are such as come under the 
 operation of justice, or of mercy, — whether the 
 one attribute will exact from him the penalty,^ 
 or the other will smile on him connivance. It 
 
SERMON XV. 371 
 
 is in vain to say, that if he repent and turn from 
 them, mercy will claim him as her own, and 
 recover him from the dominion of justice, and 
 spread over all his sins the mantle of an ever- 
 lasting oblivion. This may still be saying no- 
 thing, — for the work of repentance is a work, 
 which, though he should be always trying, he 
 always fails in ; and in spite of his every exer- 
 tion, there is a sin and a shortness in all his ser- 
 vices. And when he casts his eye along the 
 scale of character, he sees the better and the 
 worse on each side of him ; and the difficulty 
 still recurs, how far down in the scale does mercy 
 extend, or how far up on this scale does justice 
 carry its fiery sentence of condemnation. And 
 thus it is, that he feels no fixed security, which 
 he can lay hold of, — no solid ground on which he 
 can lay the trust of his acceptance with God. 
 And this religion, which has left the whole pro- 
 blem of the attributes undetermined, which can 
 furnish the sinner with no light, by which he 
 may be made to perceive how justice can be 
 displayed, but at the expense of mercy, or how 
 mercy can be displayed, but by breaking in up- 
 on the entireness of justice; this hollow, base- 
 less, unsupported system, which, by mangling 
 and deforming the whole aspect of the Deity, 
 has virtually left man without God, — has also, by 
 the faint and twilight obscurity, or rather by the 
 midniffht darkness in which it has involved the 
 question about the point of sinfulness, at which 
 
372 SERMON XV. 
 
 the one attri brute begins the exercise of its ri- 
 gour, and the other ceases its indulgence, not 
 only left man without God, but also left him 
 without any solid hope in the world. 
 
 But, Secondly, the confidence we have been 
 attempting to expose, is hostile to the cause of 
 practical righteousness in the world. 
 
 For what is the real and experimental eflfect 
 of the obscurity in question on the practice of 
 mankind ? The question about our interest 
 with God, is felt to be unresolvable; and, un- 
 der this feeling, no genuine attempt is made to 
 resolve it. Man eases himself of the difficulty 
 by putting it away from him ; and, as he can- 
 jjot find the point of gradation in the scale of 
 character, on the one side of which, there lies 
 acceptance with God, and on the other side of 
 it, condemnation,— he just upholds himself in 
 tranquillity at any one point, and throughout 
 every one variety of this gradation. 
 
 Let the question only be put. How far down, 
 in the scale of character, m^y this loose system 
 of confidence be carried ? and where is the li- 
 mit between those sins, to which forgiveness 
 may be looked for, and those sins from which it is 
 withheld.'* and you will seldom find the man 
 who skives an answer against himself. The world, 
 in fact, is so much the home and the resting- 
 place of every natural man, that you will not 
 get him so to press, and so to prosecute the 
 question, as to come to any conclusion, that is 
 
SERMON XV. 373 
 
 at all likely to alarm him. He will not barter 
 his present peace, for a concern that looks so 
 distant to him as that of his ctornitv. The 
 question touches but lightly on his icclings, and 
 an answer conceived lightly, and given lightly, 
 will be enough to pacify him. Go to the man, 
 whose decent and unexceptionable proprieties 
 make him the admiration of all his acquaint- 
 ances, and even he will allow that he has his in- 
 firmities ; but he can smother all his apprehen- 
 sions, and regale his fancy with the smile of an 
 indulgent God. Take, now, a descending step 
 in the scale of character; and do you think there 
 is not to be met with there, the very same j)ro- 
 cess of conscious infirmity on the one hand, and 
 of vague, general, and bewildering confidence 
 on the other ? Will the people of the lower sta- 
 tion not do the very same thing with the people 
 above them ? — Compare themselves with them- 
 selves, and find equals to keep them in coun- 
 tenance, and share in the average respect that 
 circulates around them, and take comfort in the 
 review of their very fair and neighbourlike ac- 
 complishments, and with the allowance of being 
 just such sinners as they are in the daily habit 
 of associating with, get all their remorse, and 
 all their gloomy anticipations disi)osed of, by 
 throwing the whole burden of them, in a loose 
 and general way, on the indulgence of God ^ 
 And where, in the name of truth and of right- 
 eousness, will this stop ? We can answer that 
 
.^ 
 
 374 SERMON XV. 
 
 question. It will not stop at all. It will 
 describe the whole range of human charac- 
 ter ; and we challenge you to put your fingei^ 
 on that point where it is to terminate, ot 
 to find out the place where a barrier is to be 
 raised, against the progress of this mischiev- 
 ous security. It will go downwards and 
 downwards, till it come to the very verge of the 
 malefactor's dungeon. Nay, it will enter there; 
 and we doubt not that an enlightened discerner 
 may witness, even in this receptacle of out- 
 casts, the operation of the very sentiment, which 
 gives such peace and such buoyancy to him, 
 whose moral accomplishments throw around / 
 him the lustre of a superior estimation. But 
 this lustre will not impose on the eye of God. 
 The Discerner of the heart sees that one and 
 all of us are alienated from him, and strangers 
 to the obligation of his high and spiritual re- 
 quirements. He declares the name of Christ 
 to b6 the only one given under heaven, where- 
 by m6n can be saved ; and after this, every act 
 of confidence, disowning his name, is an ex- 
 pression of the most insulting impiety. On the 
 system of general confidence, every man is left 
 to sin just as much as he likes, and to take 
 comfort just as much as his powers of de- 
 lusion can administer to him. At this rate, 
 the government of God is unhinged, — the 
 whole earth is broken loose from the system of 
 his administration, — he is deposed from his su- 
 
SERMON XV. 37., 
 
 premacy altogether,— peace, when there is no 
 peace, spreads its deadly poison over the lacc 
 of society,— and one sentiment, of deep an<i ^'a- 
 tal tranquillity about the things of God, takee 
 up its firm residence in a world, which, from one 
 end to the other of it, sends up the cry of rebel- 
 lion against him. 
 
 This is a sore evil. The want of a fixed and 
 clearly perceptible line between the justice and 
 placabiUty of the divine nature, not only buries 
 in utter darkness the question of our «icce|)tance 
 with God ; but, by throwing every thing loose 
 and undetermined, it opens up the range of a 
 most lawless and uncontrolled impunity for th(^ 
 disobedience of man, up from its gentler de- 
 viations, and down to its most profligate and 
 daring excesses. If there be no intelligible line 
 to separate the exercise of the justice of God 
 from the exercise of his placability, every indi- 
 vidual will fix this line for himself; and he will 
 make these two attributes to be yea and nay, or 
 fast and loose with each other; and he will 
 stretch out the placability, and he will press 
 upon the justice, just as much as to accommo- 
 date the standard of his religious principles to the 
 state of his religious practice ; and he ^^ ill make 
 every thing to square with his own existing taste, 
 and wishes, and convenience; and his mind 
 will soon work its own way to a system ol 
 religious opinions which gives him no disturb- 
 ance ; and the spirit of a deep slunibrr will loy 
 
37Q SERMON XV. ^ 
 
 hold of his deluded conscience ; and thus, from 
 the want of a setded line, — from the vague, am- 
 biguous, and indefinite way in which this mat- 
 ter is taken up, and brought to a very loose and 
 general conclusion, — or, in other words, from 
 that very way in which natural reUgion, whether 
 among deists, or our more slender professors of 
 Christianity, leaves the whole question, about 
 the limit of the attributes, unentered upon, — 
 will every man take comfort in the imagined 
 tenderness of God, just as much as he stands in 
 need of it, and experiment on the patience of 
 God just as far as his natural desires may carry 
 him, — so that when we look to the men of the 
 world, as they pass smoothly onward, from the 
 cradle to the grave, do we see each of them in a 
 state of profound security as to his interest with 
 God ; each of them solacing himself with his own 
 conception about the slenderness of his guilt, 
 and the kindness of an indulgent Deity ; each 
 of them in a state of false and fancied peace 
 with Heaven, while every affection of the inner 
 man, and many of the doings of the outer man, 
 bear upon them the stamp of rebellion against 
 Heaven's law ; each of them walking without 
 uneasiness, and without terror, while, at the 
 same time, each and all of them do in fact walk 
 in the counsel of their own hearts, and after the 
 sight of their own eyes. 
 
SERMON XVL 
 
 THE UNION OF TRUTH AND MERCY IN THE GOSPEL. 
 
 Psalm lxxxv. 10. 
 
 " Mercy and truth are met together ; righteousness and 
 peace have kissed each other." 
 
 It was not by a simple deed of amnesty, that 
 man was invited to return and be at peace with 
 God. It was by a deed of expiation. It was not 
 by nullifying the sanctions of the law, that man 
 was offered a free and a full discharge from the 
 penalties he had incurred by breaking it. It was 
 by executing l^ese sanctions on another, who 
 voluntarily took them upon himself, and \\ ho, in 
 so doing, magnified the law, and made it honour- 
 able. To redeem us from the curse of the law, 
 Christ became a curse for us. It was not by 
 God lifting off our iniquities from our persons, 
 and scattering them away into a region of forget- 
 fulness, without one demonstration of his abhor- 
 rence, and without the fulfilment of his threat- 
 enings against them ; but lifting them off from us, 
 he laid them on another, who bare, in his oun 
 person, the punishment that we should have 
 
 48 
 
578 SERMON XVr. 
 
 borne. God laid upon his own Son the iniqui- 
 ties of us all. The guilt of our sins is not done 
 away by a mere axt of forgiveness. It is 
 washed away by the blood of the Lamb. God 
 set him forth a propitiation. He was smitten 
 for our transgressions. He gave himself for 
 us an offering and a sacrifice to God. The 
 system of the gospel no more expunges the 
 attribute of mercy from the character of the 
 Godhead, than it expunges the attributes of 
 truth and righteousness. But all the mercy 
 which it offers and proclaims to a guilty world, 
 is the mercy which flows upon it through the 
 channel of that Mediatorship, by wliich his truth 
 and his justice have been asserted and vindi- 
 cated ; and, while it reveals to us the openness 
 of this channel, it also reveals to us that every 
 other which the heart of man may conceive, is 
 shut, and intercepted, and utterly impassable. 
 There is none other name given under heaven, 
 whereby man can be saved, but the name of him 
 who poured out his soul unto the death for us. 
 Without the shedding of his blood, there cauld 
 have been no remission. And he who hath not 
 the Son, hath the wrath of God abiding on him. 
 It is due to our want of moral sensibility, 
 that sin looks so light and so trivial in our esti- 
 mation. We have no adequate feeling of its 
 malignity, of its exceeding sinfulness. And, li- 
 able as we are to think of God, that he is alto- 
 gether like unto ourselves, do we think that he 
 
SERMON XVI. 379 
 
 -may cancel our guilt as easily from the book of 
 his condemnation, bj an act of forgiveness, as 
 we cancel it from our own memory, by an acl 
 of forgetfulness. But God takes his own way, 
 and most steadfastly asserts, throughout the 
 whole process of our recovery, the preroga- 
 tives of his own truth, and his own righteous- 
 ness. He so loved the world, as to send his 
 Son to it, not to condemn, but to save. But 
 he will not save us in such a way as to con- 
 firm our light estimation of sin, or to let down 
 the worth and the dignity of his own character. 
 The method of our salvation is not left to the 
 random caprices of human thought, and human 
 fancy. It is a method devised for us by un- 
 searchable wisdom, and made known to us by 
 fixed and unalterable truth, and prescribed to 
 us by a supreme authority, which has debarred 
 every other method; and though we may be- 
 hold no one feature, either of greatness or of 
 beauty to admire in it — yet do angels admire it; 
 and to accomplish it, did the Son of God move 
 from the residence of his glory; and all heaven 
 appears to have laboured with the magnitude 
 and the mystery of the great undertaking; aud 
 along the whole tract of revelation, from the 
 first age of the world, do we behold the notices 
 of the coming atonement; and while man sits at 
 his ease, and can see nothing to move hiin 
 either to gratitude or to wonder, in the evolu- 
 tion of that mighty scheme, by which mercy and 
 
380 SERMON XVI. 
 
 truth have been made to meet together, and 
 righteousness and peace to kiss each other, — it 
 is striking to mark the place and the prominency 
 which are given to it, in the counsels .of the 
 Eternal. And it might serve to put us right, 
 and to rebuke the levities which are so cur- 
 rently afloat in this dead and darkened world, 
 did we only look at the stress that is laid on 
 this great work, throughout the whole of its pre- 
 paration and its performance, — and how to bring 
 it to its accomplishment, the Father had to send 
 the Son into the world, — and to throw a veil 
 over his glory, — and to put the cup of our chas- 
 tisement into his hand, — and to bid the sword of 
 righteous vengeance awake against his fellow,— 
 and, that he might clear a way of access to a 
 guilty world, had to do it through the blood of 
 an everlasting covenant,— and to lay the full 
 burden of our atonement on the head of the 
 innocent sufferer,— and to endure the spectacle 
 of his bitterness, and his agonies, and his tears, 
 till he cried out that it was finished, and so 
 bowed himself and gave up the ghost. 
 
 Man is blind to the necessity, but God sees it. 
 The prayer of Christ in his agony was, that the 
 cup, if possible, might be removed from him. 
 But it was not possible. He could have called 
 twelve legions of angels, and they would have 
 eagerly flown to rescue their beloved Lord from 
 the hands of his persecutors. But he knew 
 
SERMON XVI. 381 
 
 that the Scripture must be fulfilled, and they 
 looked on in silent forbearance. It behoved him 
 to undergo all this. And there was a need, and 
 a propriety, why he should suffer all these things, 
 ere he entered into his glory. 
 
 We shall offer three distinct remarks on this 
 method of our redemption, in order to prove 
 that it fulfils the whole assertion of our text, 
 that it has made mercy and truth to meet to- 
 gether, and righteousness and peace to kiss 
 each other. 
 
 First, it maintains the entireness and glory 
 of all the attributes of the Godhead. Secondly, 
 it provides a solid foundation for the peace of 
 every sinner who concurs in it. And, thirdly, 
 it strengthens all the securities for the cause of 
 practical righteousness among men. 
 
 I. In d^feness, as we are, about the glory and 
 character of the Supreme Being, it would offer 
 a violence even to our habitual conceptions of 
 him, to admit of any limit, or any deduction 
 from the excellencies of his nature. We should 
 even think it a lessening of the Deity, were 
 the extent of his perfections such, as that we 
 should be able to grasp them within the com- 
 prehension of our understandings. The pro- 
 perty of chiefest admiration to his creatures is, 
 that they know but a part, and are not aware 
 how small a part that is, to what is unknown ; 
 and never is their obeisance more lowly, than 
 when under the sense of a greatness that is un- 
 
382 SERMON XVL 
 
 defined and unsearchable, they feel themselves 
 baffled bj the infinitude of the Creator. It is 
 not his power as attested by all that exists within 
 the limits of actual discovery; but his power, as 
 conceived to form and uphold a universe, whose 
 outskirts are unknown. — It is not his wisdom, as 
 exhibited in what has been seen by human eye ; 
 but his wisdom, as pervading the unnuHnbered 
 secrecies of a mechanism, which no eye can 
 penetrate. — It is not his knowledge, as displayed 
 in the greater and prophetic outlines of the his- 
 tory of this world ; but his knowledge, as em- 
 bracing all the mazes of creation, and all the 
 mighty periods of eternity. — It is not his anti- 
 quity, as prior to all that is visible, and as reach- 
 ing far above and beyond the remote infancy 
 of nature; but his antiquity, as retiring up- 
 wards from the loftiest ascent of our imagina- 
 tions, and lost in the viewless depths (jf^an ex- 
 istence, that was from everlasting. — These are 
 what serve to throne the Deity in grandeur in- 
 accessible. It IS the thought of what eye hath 
 not seen, and ear hath not heard, neither hath 
 it entered into the heart of man to conceive, 
 that places him on such a height of mystery 
 before us. And should we ever be able to 
 overtake, in thought, the dimensions of any 
 attribute that belongs to him, — and far more 
 should we ever be able to outstrip, in fancy, a 
 single feature of that character which is realised 
 hy the living and reigning, God — should defect 
 
SERMON XVI. 383 
 
 orimpotency attach to him who dwelleth in tin; 
 •light which no man can approach unto, would 
 we feel as if all our most rooted and accustomed 
 conceptions of the Godhead had sustained an 
 overthrow, would we feel as if the sanctuary of 
 him who is the King eternal and invisible had 
 suffered violence. 
 
 And this isjust as true of the moral as of the na- 
 tural attributes of the Godhead. When we think 
 of his truth, it is a truth which, if heaven and earth 
 stan(J committed to the fulfilment of its minutest 
 article, heaven and earth must, for its vindica- 
 tion, pass awaj. When we think of his holiness, 
 it is such that, if sin offer to draw nigh, a devour- 
 ing fire goeth forth to burn up and to destroy it. 
 When we think of his law, it is a law which must 
 be made honourable, even though, by the en- 
 forcement of its sanctions, it shall sweep into 
 an abyss of misery all the generations of the re- 
 bellious. And yet this God, just, and righteous, 
 and true, is a God of love, and of compassion, 
 infinite. He is slow to anger, and of great 
 mercy. He does not afflict willingly ; and as a 
 father rejoices over his children, does he long 
 to rejoice in tenderness over us all ; and out of 
 the storehouse of a grace that is inexhaustible, 
 does he deal out the offers of pardon and re- 
 conciliation to every one of us. Even in some 
 way or other does the love of God for his crea- 
 tures find its way through the barrier of their 
 sinfulness ; and he who is of purer eyes than Uj 
 
384 SERMON XVL 
 
 behold iniquity, — he who hath spoken the word, 
 and shall he not perform it, — he of whose law • 
 it has been said, that not one jot, or one tittle of 
 it, shall pass away, till all be fulfilled, he holds 
 out the overtures of friendship to the children 
 of disobedience, and invites the guiltiest among 
 them to the light of his countenance, in time, 
 and to the enjoyment of his glory and presence, 
 in eternity. 
 
 There is no one device separate from the 
 gospel, by which the glory of any one of these 
 attributes can be exalted, but by the surrender 
 or the limitation of another attribute. It is in the 
 gospel alone that we perceive how each of them 
 may be heightened to infinity, and yet each of 
 them reflect a lustre on the rest. When Christ 
 died, justice was magnified. When he bore the 
 burden of our atonement, the truth of God re- 
 ceived its vindication. When the sins of the 
 world brought him to the cross, the lesson 
 taught by this impressive spectacle was^ holiness 
 unto the Lord. All the severer perfections of 
 the Godhead were, in fact, more powerfully il- 
 lustrated by the deep and solemn propitiation 
 that was made for sin, than they could have 
 been by the direct punishment of sin itself, — 
 Yet all redounding to the triumph of his mer- 
 cy, — For mercy, in the exersice of a simple and 
 spontaneous tenderness, does not make so high 
 an exhibition, as mercy forcing its way through 
 restraints and difficulties, — as mercy accom- 
 
SERMON XVI. 385 
 
 plishingits purposes by a plan of unsearchable 
 wisdom,— as mercy surrendering what was most 
 dear for the attainment of its object,— as the 
 mercy of God, not simply loving the world, but 
 so loving it as to send his only beloved Son, 
 and to lay upon him the iniquities of us all, — 
 as mercy, thus surmounting a barrier which, to 
 created eye, appeared immoveable, and which 
 both pours a glory on the other excellencies of 
 the Godhead, and rejoices over them. 
 
 It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has 
 poured the light of day into all the intricacies 
 of this contemplation. We there see no com- 
 promise, and no surrender, of the attributes to 
 each other. We see no mutual encroachment 
 on their respective provinces, — no letting down 
 of that entire and absolute perfection whicii be- 
 longs to every part in the character of the God- 
 head. The justidie of God has not been invaded ; 
 for by him, who poured out his soul unto the 
 death for us, has the whole weight of this ag- 
 grieved and offended attribute been borne ; and 
 from that cross of agony, where he cried out 
 that it was finished, does the divine Justice send 
 forth a brighter and a nobler radiance of vindi- 
 cated majesty, than if the minister of vengeance 
 had crone forth, and wreaked the whole sentence 
 of condemnation on every son and dauo^jner 
 of the species. And as the justice of God has 
 suffered no encroachment, so, such is the admi- 
 rable skilfulness of this expedient, that the mer- 
 
 49 
 
386^ SERMON XVI. 
 
 cy of God is restrained by no limitation. It is 
 arrested in its offers by no question about the 
 shades, and the degrees, and the varieties of 
 sinfulness. It stops at no point in the de- 
 scending scale of human depravity. The blood 
 of Christ cleasing from all sin, has spread such 
 a field for its invitations, that in the full confi- 
 dence of a warranted and universal commission, 
 may the messengers of grace walk over the face 
 of the world, and lay the free gift of accept- 
 ance at the door of every individual, and of 
 every family. Such is the height, and depth, 
 and breadth, and length, of the mercy of God 
 in Christ Jesus ; and yet it is a mercy so exer- 
 cised, as to keep the whole counsel and charac- 
 ter of God unbroken, — and a mercy, from the 
 display of which, there beams a brighter radi- 
 ance than ever from each lineament in the 
 image of the Godhead. 
 
 Now, if the glory of God be so involved in 
 this way of redemption, what shall we think of 
 the disparagement that is rendered to him, and 
 to all his attributes, by the man who, without 
 respect to the work and the righteousness of 
 Christ, seeks to be justified by his own right- 
 eousness ? It is quite possible for man to toil and 
 to waste his strength on the object of his salva- 
 tion, and yet, by all he can make out, may be 
 only widening his laborious deviation from the 
 path which leads to it. Do his uttermost to 
 establish a righteousness of his own, and what is 
 
SERMON XVL 387 
 
 the whole fruit of his exertion ? — the mere sem- 
 blance of righteousness, without the infusion of 
 its essential quality, — labour without love, — the 
 drudgery of the hand, without the desire and 
 devotedness of the heart, as its inspiring princi- 
 ple. If the man be dissatisfied, as he certainly 
 ought to be, then a sense of unexpiated guilt 
 will ever and anon intrude itself upon his fears; 
 and a resistless conviction of the insufRciency 
 of all his performances will never ceqse to 
 haunt and to paralyze him. In these circum- 
 stances, there may be the conformity of the let- 
 ter extorted from him, in the spirit of bondage; 
 but the animating soul is not there, which turn* 
 obedience into a service of delight, and a ser- 
 vice of affection. In Heaven's account, such 
 obedience as this is but the mockery of a life- 
 less skeleton ; and, even as a skeleton, it is both 
 wanting in its parts, and unshapely in its pro- 
 portions. It is an obedience defective, even in 
 the tale and measure of its 'external duties. 
 But what pervades the whole of it by the ele- 
 ment of worthlessness is, that, destitute of love 
 to God, it is utterly destitute of a celestial cha- 
 racter, and can never prepare an inhabitant of 
 this world for the joys or the services of die 
 great celestial family. 
 
 And, on the other hand, if the man be saus- 
 fied, this very circumstance gives to the right- 
 eousness that he would establish for himsrh, the 
 character of an insult upon God, instead ol a 
 
588 SERMON XVI. 
 
 reverential offering. It is a righteousness ac- 
 companied with a certain measure of confident 
 feeling, that it is good enough for the accept- 
 ance of the Lawgiver. There is in it the au- 
 dacity of a claim and a challenge upon his ap- 
 probation. Short as it is, in respect of outward 
 performance, and tainted within by the very 
 spirit of earthliness, it is brought like a lame 
 and diseased victim in sacrifice, and laid upon 
 the altar before him. It is an evil and a bitter 
 thing to sin against God ; but it is a still more 
 direct outrage upon his attributes, to expect 
 that he will look on sinfulness w ith complacen- 
 cy. It is an open defiance to the law, to trample 
 upon its requirements ; but it were a still dead- 
 lier overthrow of its authority, to reverse its 
 sanctions, and make it turn its threatenings 
 into rewards. The sinner who disobeys and 
 trembles, renders at least the homage of his 
 fears to the truth and power of the Eternal. 
 But the sinner who makes a righteousness of 
 his infirmities, and puts a gloss upon his diso- 
 bedience, and brings the accursed thing to the 
 gate of the sanctuary, and bids the piercing eye 
 of Omniscience look upon it, and be satisfied, — 
 tell us whether the fire which cometh forth will 
 burn up the offering, that it may rise in sweetly 
 smelling savour to him who sitteth on the throne ; 
 or will it seize on the presumptuous offerer, 
 who could thus dare the inspection, and thrust 
 
SERMON XVI. 889 
 
 his unprepared footstep within the precincts of 
 unspotted holiness ? 
 
 And how must it go to aggravate tlic oiTcnce 
 of such an approach, when it is made in the 
 face of another righteousness which God him- 
 self hath provided, and in which alone he hath 
 proclaimed, that it is safe for a sinner to draw 
 nigh. When the alternative is fairly proj)osed, 
 to come on the merit of your own obedience 
 and be tried by it, or to come on the merit of 
 the obedience of Christ, and receive in your 
 own person the reward which he hath purchased 
 for you, — only think of the aspect it must bear 
 in the eye of Heaven, when the offer of the 
 perfect righteousness is contemptuously set 
 aside, and the sinner chooses to appear in his 
 own character before the presence of the Eter- 
 nal. When the imputation of vanity and use- 
 lessness is thus fastened on all that the Son hath 
 done, and on all that the Father hath devised, 
 for the redemption of the guilty, — when that 
 righteousness, to accomplish which Christ had 
 to travail in the greatness of his strength, is thus 
 held to be nothing, by creatures v\ hose every 
 thought, and every performance, have the stain 
 of corruption in them — when that doctrine of 
 his death, on which, in the book of God's coun- 
 sel, is made to turn the deliverance of our world, 
 is counted to be foohshness, — when the sinner 
 thus persists in obtruding his own virtue on the 
 notice of the Lawgiver, and refuses to ])ut on, af 
 
390 SERMON XVI. 
 
 a covering of defence, the virtue of his Saviour, 
 — we have only to contrast the lean shrivelled 
 paltry dimensions of the one, with the faultless, 
 and sustained, and Godlike perfection of the 
 other, to perceive how desperate is the folly, 
 and how unescapeable is the doom, of him who 
 hath neglected the great salvation. 
 
 It is thus that the refusal of Christ, as our 
 righteousness, stamps a deeper and a more atro- 
 cious character of rebellion on the guilty than 
 before, — and it is thus that the word of his 
 mouth, like a two-edged sword, performs one 
 function on him who accepts, and an opposite 
 function on him who despises it. If the gospel 
 be not the savour of life unto life, it will be the 
 savour of death unto death. If it be not a rock 
 of confidence, it will be a rock of offence, and it 
 will fall upon him who resists it, and grind him 
 into powder. If we kiss not the Son, in the day 
 of our peace, the day of his wrath is coming, 
 and who shall be able to stand when his anger is 
 kindled but a litde ? We have already offended 
 God, by the sinfulness of our practice,— we may 
 yet offend him still more, by the haughtiness of 
 our pretensions. The evil of our best works 
 consdtutes them an abomination in his sight; 
 but nothing remains to avert the hosulity of his 
 truth and his holiness against us, if by those 
 works we seek to be justified. It will indeed be 
 the seaUng up of our iniquity, if our obedience, 
 impregnated as it is with the very spirit of that 
 
SERMON XVI. 391 
 
 iniquity, shall be set up in rivalship to the obe- 
 dience of his only and well beloved Son, — if, by 
 viewing the defect of our ri^hieousness, as a 
 thing of indifference, and the fulness of his, as 
 a thing of no value, we shall heap insult upon 
 transgression, — and if, after the provocation of 
 a broken law, we shall maintain the boastful at- 
 titude of him who hath won the merit and the 
 reward of victory, and in this attitude add the 
 farther provocation of a slighted and rejected 
 gospel. 
 
 II. We shall conclude, for the present, these 
 brief and imperfect remarks, by adverting to the 
 solidity of that foundation of peace, w hich the 
 gospel scheme of mercy provides for every sin- 
 ner who concurs in it. It is altogether worthy 
 of observation, how, under this exquisite con- 
 trivance, the very elements of disquietude, in 
 a sinner's bosom, are turned into the elements 
 of comfort and confidence, in the mind of a 
 believer. It is the unswei-ving tmth of God, 
 which haunts the former by the thought of 
 lite certainty of his coming vengeance. Bui 
 this very truth, committed to the fulfilment 
 of all those promises, which are yea and 
 amen in Christ Jesus, sustains the latter by 
 the thought of the certainty of his coming 
 salvation. It is justice, unbending justice, 
 which sets such a seal on the condemnation ol 
 the disobedient, that every sinner, who is out ol 
 Christ, feels it to be irrevocable. In Christ, 
 
392 SERMON XVL 
 
 this attribute, instead of a terror, becomes a se- 
 curity; for it is just in God to justify him who 
 believes in Jesus. It is the sense of God's vio- 
 lated authority, which fills the heart of an 
 awakened sinner with the fear that he is undone. 
 But this authority, under the gospel proclama- 
 tion, is leagued on the side of comfort, and not 
 of fear; for this is the commandment of God, 
 that we believe in the name of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as he has given us commandment. It is 
 not by an act of mercy, triumphing over the 
 other attributes, that pardon is extended to the 
 sinful ; for, under the economy of the gospel, 
 these attributes are all engaged on the side of 
 mercy ; and God is not only merciful, but he is 
 faithful and just in forgiving the sins of those 
 who accept of Christ, as he is offered to them 
 in the gospel. Those very perfections, then, 
 which fix and necessitate the doom of the re- 
 bellious, form into a canopy of defence around 
 the head of the believer. The guarantees of a 
 sinner's punishment now become the guaran- 
 tees of promise; and while, like the flaming 
 sword at the gate of paradise, they turn every 
 way, and shut him out of every access to the 
 Deity but one, — let him take to that one, and they 
 instandy become to him the sureties and the 
 safeguard of that hiding-place into which he 
 has entered. 
 
 The foundation, then, of a believer's peace, 
 is, in every way, as sure and as solid as is the 
 
SERMON XVI. 393 
 
 foundation of a sinner's fears. The very tniili 
 which makes the one tremble, because staked 
 to the execution of an unruUiUed tlireat, mini- 
 sters to the other the strongest consolation. It 
 is impossible for God to lie, says an a\vak( ncd 
 sinner, and this thought pursues him with the 
 agony of an arrow sticking fast. It is impos- 
 sible for God to lie, says a behever; and as 
 he hath not only said but sworn, tiiere are two 
 immutable things by which to anchor the con- 
 fidence of him, wlio hath fled for refuge to 
 the hope set before him. He staggers not at 
 the promises of God, because of unl)clicf. He 
 holds himself steadfast, by simply counting him 
 to be faithful who hath promised. It is through 
 that very faith, by being strong in which he 
 gives glory to God, that he gains peace to his 
 own heart; and the justice which beams a ter- 
 ror on all who stand without, utterly passes by 
 the shielded head of him, who hath turned to 
 the strong hold, and taken a place under the 
 shadow of his wings, who hath satisfied the jus- 
 tice of God, and taken upon himself the burden 
 of its fullest vindication. 
 
 iO 
 
SERMON XVn. 
 
 THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH, 
 
 Acts xxvi. 18. 
 ** Sanctified by faith.'- 
 
 III. It is a matter of direct and obvious un- 
 derstanding, how the law, by its promises and 
 its threatenings, should exert and influence over 
 human conduct. We seem to walk in a plain 
 path, when we pass onwards from the enforce- 
 ments of the law, to the effect of them on the 
 fears, and the hopes, and the purposes of man. 
 Do this, and you shall Hve ; and do the oppo- 
 site of this, and you shall forfeit life, — form two 
 clear and distinct processes, in the conceiving 
 of which, there is no difficulty whatever. The 
 motive and the movement both stand intelli- 
 gibly out to the discernment of common sense ; 
 nor in the application of such argument as this, 
 to the design of operating on the character or 
 life of a human being, is there any mystery to 
 
SERMON XVII. 395 
 
 embarrass, any hidden step, which, by baftVmg 
 our every attempt to seize upon it, leaves us in 
 a state of helpless perplexity. 
 
 The same is not true of the gospel, or of the 
 manner in which it operates on the spring's of 
 human action. It is not so readily seen, how 
 its privileges can be appropriated by faitli, and 
 at the same time its precepts can retain their 
 practical authority over the conduct of a be- 
 liever. There is an alarm, and an honest alarm, 
 on the part of many, lest a proclamation of free 
 grace unto the world, should undermine all our 
 securities for the cause of righteousness in the 
 world. They look with jealousy upon the frcc- 
 ness. They fear lest a deed so am])Ie and luicon- 
 ditional, of forgiveness for the past, should give 
 rise, in the heart of a sinner, to a secure opinion 
 of his impunity for the future. What they dread 
 is, that to proclaim such a freeness of paidon on 
 the part of God, w ould be to proclaim a cor- 
 responding freeness of practice on the part 
 of man. They are able to comprehend how 
 the law, by its direct enforcements, should 
 operate in keeping men from sin ; but they are 
 not able to comprehend how, when not under 
 the law, but under grace, there should continue 
 the same motives to abstain from sin, as those 
 intelligible ones which the law furnishes,, or 
 even other motives, of more powerful oj)era- 
 tion. We are quite sure, that there is some- 
 thing here which needs to be made plain to tJie 
 
396 SERMON XVII. 
 
 understandings of a very numerous class of 
 inquirers, — a knot of difficulty which needs to 
 be untied, — a hidden step in the process of ex- 
 planation, on which they may firmly pass from 
 what is known to what is unknown. There are 
 not two terms, in the whole compass of human 
 language, which stand more frequently and 
 more familiarly contrasted wdth each other, than 
 those of faith and good works ; and this, not 
 merely on the question of our acceptance before 
 God, but also on the question of the personal 
 character and acquirements of a true disciple of 
 Christ. It is positively not seen, how the pos- 
 session of the one should at all stimulate to the 
 performance of the other, — how the peace of 
 the gospel should reside in the same heart, from 
 which there emanates, on the life of a believer, 
 the practice of the gospel, — how a righteous- 
 ness that is without the deeds of the law, should 
 stand connected, in the actual history of him 
 who obtains it, with a zealous, and diligent, and 
 every-day doing of these deeds. There is much 
 in all this, to puzzle the man who is experi- 
 mentally a stranger to the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 Nor doyes it at all serve to extricate or to en- 
 lighten him, when he is made to perceive, that, 
 in point of fact, those men who most cordially 
 assent to the doctrine of salvation being all of 
 grace and not of works, are most assiduous in 
 so walking, and in so working, and in so pains- 
 taking, as if salvation were all of works, and not 
 
SERMON XVII. .507 
 
 of grace. The fact is quite obvious and uiujues- 
 tionable. But the principle on which it rests, 
 remains a mystery to the general eye of tlie 
 world. They marvel, but they go no fartlicr. 
 They see that thus it is, but they see not how it 
 is; and they put it down among those inexpli- 
 cable oddities which do at times occur, both 
 in the moral and natural kingdom of the crea- 
 tion. 
 
 But in all our attempts to dissipate this ob- 
 scurity, it is well to advert to the total (liffercnce 
 between him who has the faith, and him w lio 
 has it not The one has the materials of the 
 argument under his eye, and within the grasp 
 of his handling. The other may be able to re- 
 cognize in the argument, a logical and consist- 
 ent process ; but he is at a loss about the simple 
 conceptions, which form the materials of the 
 argument. He is like a man who can jierfonn 
 all the manipulations of an algebraical process, 
 while he feels not the force or the significancy 
 of the symbols. His habits of ratiocination 
 enable him to perceive, that there is a connec- 
 tion between the ideas in the argument. But 
 the ideas themselves are not manifest to him. 
 It is not in the power of reasoning to supply 
 this want. Reasoning cannot create the pri- 
 mary materials of the argument. It only ce- 
 ments them together. And here it is, that you 
 are met by the impotency of human deinonstni- 
 t.ion,— and are reduced to the attitude of kimck- 
 
398 SERMON XVII. 
 
 ing at a door which you cannot open, — and feel 
 your need of an enlightening spirit, — and are 
 made to perceive, that it is only on the threshold 
 of Christianity, where you can hold the inter- 
 course of a common sympathy and understand- 
 ing with the world,— and that, to be admitted 
 to the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, you 
 must pass into a region of manifestation, where 
 the world cannot follow, but where it will cast 
 the imputation of madness, and of mysticism 
 after you. 
 
 Without attempting to define faith, as to the 
 nature of it, which could not be done but with 
 other words more simple than itself, let us look 
 to the objects of faith, and see whether there do 
 not emanate from them, a sanctifying influence 
 on the heart of every real belie ver. 
 
 First, then, the whole. object of faith, is the 
 matter of tlie testimony of God in Scripture. So 
 that though faith be a single principle, and is 
 designated in language by a single term, — yet 
 this by no means precludes it from being such 
 a principle, as comes into contact, and is con- 
 versant, with a very great variety of objects. In 
 this respect it may bear a resemblance to sight, 
 or hearing, or any other of the senses, by which 
 man holds communication with the external 
 things that are near him, and around him. The 
 same eye which, when open, looks to a friend, 
 and ceui, from that very look, afford entrance 
 into the heart for an emotion of tenderness, wiU 
 
SERMON XVll. 399 
 
 also behold other visible things, and takr in an 
 appropriate influence from each of tlicni, — will 
 behold the prospect of beauty that is before it, 
 and thence obtain gratification to the taste, — or 
 will behold the sportive feUcity of animals, and 
 thence obtain gratification to the benevolence, 
 — or will behold the precipice beneath, and 
 thence obtain a warning of danger, or a direction 
 of safety, — or may behold a thousand diflbrent 
 objects, and obtain a thousand different feelings 
 and different intimations. 
 
 Now the same of faith. It has been called 
 the eye of the mind. But whether this be a 
 well conceived image or not, it certainly aflbrds 
 an inlet to the mind for a great variety of com- 
 munications. The Apostle calls faith the evi- 
 dence of things not seen,— not of one such 
 thing, but of very many such things. The man 
 who possesses faith, can be no more intellec- 
 tually blind to one of these things, and at the 
 same time knowing and believing as to another 
 of them, than the man who possesses sight can. 
 with his eye open, perceive one external object, 
 and have no perception of another, which stand- 
 as nearly and as conspicuously before him. 
 The man who is destitute of sight, uill never 
 know what it is to feel the charm of visible seen 
 ery. But grant him sight ; and he will not only hr 
 made alive to this charm, but to a mult.tiKle of 
 other influences, all emanadng from the varioiL- 
 objects of visible nature, through the eye upo., 
 
400 SERMON XVII. 
 
 the mind, and against which his blindness had 
 before opposed a hopeless and invincible bar- 
 rier. And the man who is destitute of faith, 
 will never know what it is to feel the char?ii of 
 the peace-speaking blood of Christ. But grant 
 him faith ; and he will not only be made alive to 
 this charm, but to a multitude of other influ- 
 ences, all emanating from the various truths of 
 revelation, through this intellectual organ, on 
 the heart of him who was at one time blind, 
 but has now been made to see. This will help, 
 in some measure, to clear up the perplexity to 
 which we have just now adverted. They who 
 are under its darkening influence, conceive of 
 the faith which worketh peace, that it has only 
 to do with one doctrine, and that that one doc- 
 trine relates to Christ, as a peace-offering for sin. 
 Now, it is very true, that it has to do with this 
 one doctrine ; but it has also to do with other 
 doctrines, all equally presented before it in the 
 very same record, and the view of all which is 
 equally to be had, from the very same quarter 
 of contemplation. In other words, the' very 
 same opening of the mental eye, through which 
 the peace of the gospel finds entrance into the 
 lK)som of a faithful man, aflbrds an entrance for 
 the righteousness of the gospel along with it. 
 The truth that Christ died for the sins of the 
 world, will cast upon his mind its apppropriate 
 influence. But so also will the truth that 
 Christ is to judge the world, and the truth that 
 
SERMON XVIL 401 
 
 unless ye repent ye shall perish, and the iruth 
 that they who have a right to the tree of life, 
 are they who keep the commanchncnts, tjid the 
 truth, that an unrighteous man shall nut inlurit 
 the kingdom of God. If a man see not every 
 one object that is placed within the sphere ot* his 
 natural vision, he sees none of the in, and his 
 whole body is full of darkness. If a man be- 
 lieve the Bible to be the word of God, he will 
 read it ; but if he read it, and believe not every 
 one truth that lies within the grasp of his un- 
 derstanding, he believes none of them, and is 
 in darkness, and knoweth not whither he is go- 
 ing. 
 
 If I open the door of my mind to the u ord 
 of God, I as effectually make it the repository 
 of various truths, as, if I open the door of my 
 chamber, and take in the Bible, I make this 
 chamber the repository of the book, and of 
 every chapter, and of every verse, that is con- 
 tained in it. I thus bring my mind into con- 
 tact with every one influence, that every one 
 truth is fitted to exercise over h. If there be 
 nothing in these U'uths contradictory to each 
 other, (and if there be, let this 'set aside, as it 
 ought, the authority of the whole connnunica- 
 tion,) then the mind acts a right and consisunt 
 part in beUeving each of them, and in submit- 
 ting itself to the influence of each of them. And 
 thus it is, that believing the propitiati(jn u hich is 
 through th? blood of Christ, for the remission 
 •5 J 
 
402 SERMON XVll. 
 
 of sins that are past, I may feel through huH 
 the peace of reconciliation with the Father; 
 and believing that he who cometh unto Christ 
 for forgiveness must forsake all, I may also 
 feel the necessity which lies upon me of de- 
 parting from all iniquity ; and believing that in 
 myself there is no strength, for the accom- 
 plishment of such a task, I may look around 
 for other expedients, than such as can be de- 
 vised by my own natural wisdom, or carried in- 
 to effect by my own natural energies ; and be- 
 lieving that, in the hand of Christ there are 
 gifts for the rebellious, and that one of these 
 gifts is the Holy Spirit to strengthen his disci- 
 ples, I may look to him for my sanctification, 
 even as I look unto him for my redemption ; 
 and believing that the gift is truly promised as 
 an answer to prayer, I may mingle a habit of 
 prayer, with a habit of watchfulness and of en- 
 deavour. And thus may I go abroad over the 
 whole territory of divine truth, and turn to its 
 legitimate account every separate portion of it, 
 and be in all a trusting, and a working, and a 
 praying, and a rejoicing, and a trembling dis- 
 ciple, — and that, not because I have given my- 
 self up to the guidance of clashing and con- 
 tradictory principles, — but because, with a faith 
 commensurate to the testimony of God, I give 
 myself over in my whole mind, and whole per- 
 son, to the authority of a whole Bible. 
 
SERMON XVir. ^o 
 
 But, secondly, let us take wliat some may 
 thmk a more restricted view of the object of 
 faith, and suppose it to be Jesus Christ in his 
 person and in his character. It is a buuiinary, 
 but at the same time, a most true and substan- 
 tial affirmation, that we are saved by faith in 
 Christ. And yet this very affirmation, true as 
 It IS, may have been so misunderstood as to 
 darken the minds of many, into the very mis- 
 conception that we are attempting to expose. 
 I could not be said to have faith in an ac- 
 quaintance, if I behoved not all that he told 
 me. Nor have I faith in Christ, if I believe 
 not every item of that communication of which 
 he is the author, either by himself or by his 
 messengers. So that faith in Christ, so far from 
 excluding any of the truths of the Bible, com- 
 prehends our assent to them all. But we are 
 willing to admit, that the phrase is calculated to 
 fasten our attention more particularly on such 
 truth as relates, in a more immediate manner, to 
 the person and the doings of the Saviour. Take 
 it in this sense, and you will find, that though 
 eminently and directly fitted to work peace in 
 the heart of a believer, it is just as direcdy and 
 as powerfully on the side of his practical right- 
 eousness. When I think of Christ, and think 
 of him as one who has poured out his soul unto 
 the death for me, I feel a confidence in draw- 
 ing near unto God. When employed in this 
 contemplation, I look to him as a crucified Sa- 
 
404 SERMON XVlf. 
 
 viour. But without keeping mine eye for a 
 single moment from off his person,— without 
 another exercise of mind, than that by which I 
 look unto Jesus, simply and entirely, as he is set 
 forth unto me,— I also behold him at one time as 
 an exalted Saviour, and at another time as a 
 commanding Saviour, and at another time as a 
 strengthening Saviour. In other words, by the 
 mere work of faith in Christ, I bring my heart 
 into contact with all those motives, and all those 
 elements of influence, which give rise to the new 
 obedience of the gospel. When the veil betwixt 
 me and the Saviour is withdrawn, — when God 
 shines in my heart with the light of the know- 
 ledge of his own glory in the face of his Son, — 
 when the Spirit taketh of the things of Christ, 
 and showeth them unto me, and I am asked 
 which of the things it is that is most fitted to 
 arrest a convicted sinner, in the midst of his 
 cries and prayers for deliverance, — I would say, 
 that it was Christ lifted up on the cross for his 
 offences, and pouring out the blood of that migh- 
 ty expiation, by which the guilt of them all is 
 washed away. This is the rock on which he 
 will build all his hopes of acceptance before 
 God. He wull look unto Christ, and be at .peace. 
 But this is not the only attitude in which Christ 
 is revealed to him. He will look to Christ as 
 an example. He will look to him as a teacher. 
 He. will look to him in all the capacities which 
 are attached to the person, or identified with 
 
SERMON XVII. .uxb 
 
 the doings of the Saviour. He will look to him, 
 asserting his right of authority aiui disposal over 
 those whom he has purchased unto hiinsclf. i Ic 
 will, by the eye of faith, see that rebuking 
 glance which our Saviour cast over the miscon- 
 duct of his disciples, — and which, when Vcw.t 
 saw, by the eye of sight, he was so m()\ cd by 
 the spectacle, that he went out and wcj)t Utter- 
 ly. That meekness and gentleness of Christ, 
 in the name of which, Paul besought his dis- 
 ciples to walk no more after the flesh, w ill be 
 present in its influence on those who, though 
 they see him not, yet believe him, and have 
 their conceptions filled and satisfied with his 
 likeness. They will behold him to be an exalt- 
 ed Prince, as well as an exalted Sa\'iour, — anrl 
 they will count it a faithful saying, that he came 
 to sanctify as well as redeem, — and they w ill 
 look upwards to his present might as a command- 
 er, as well as forwards to his future majesty as 
 a judge, — and they will be thoroughly ])crsuad- 
 ed, that to persevere in sin, is altogether to 
 thwart the great aim of the entcrprize of our 
 redemption, — and they will understand, as Paul 
 did, who affnmed, with expostulations and tears, 
 that the enemies of righteousness arc also the 
 enemies of the cross; — and thus, from Christ, in 
 all his various attitudes, will a moralizing power 
 descend on the hearts of those w ho really bc- 
 Ueve in him, — and as surely as any man pos- 
 
406 SERMON XVII. 
 
 sesses the faith that is in Christ Jesus, so surely 
 will he be sanctified by that faith. 
 
 And, thirdly, let us confine our attention still 
 farther, to one particular article of our faith. 
 Paul was determined to know nothing, save 
 Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Now, conceive 
 faith to attach itself to the latter clause of this 
 verse, and that Christ crucified, for the time 
 being, is the single object of its contemplation. 
 There is still no such thuig as a true faith, at- 
 taching itself to this one object exclusively ; 
 and though at one time it may be the sole con- 
 templation which engrosses it, at other times it 
 may have other contemplations. If, in fact, it 
 shut out those other contemplations, which are 
 furnished by the subject-matter of the testimo- 
 ny of God, it may be proved now, and it will 
 be proved in the day of reckoriing, to be no 
 faith at all. But just as it has been said, that 
 the mind can only think of one thing at a time, 
 so faith may be employed, for a time, in looking 
 only towards one object; and as we said before, 
 let Christ crucified be conceived to be that one 
 object. From what has been said already, it 
 will be seen, that this one exercise of faith will 
 not counteract the legitimate effect of the other 
 exercises. But we should like to compute the 
 influence of this one exercise on the heart and 
 life of a believer. In the case of an Antinomi- 
 an, the doctrine of the atonement may furnish 
 
SERMON XVII. 407 
 
 a pretext and a pacification to liis conscience, 
 under a wilful habit of perseverance in iniquity. 
 But if this partial faith of his be not a real faitli, 
 then we are not res})onsible for his conduct, nor 
 ought he to be at all quoted as an exception 
 against that alliance, for which we are contend- 
 ing, between the faith of the gospel and the 
 cause of practical righteousness. Only grant 
 the faith to be real, and as there is no one doc- 
 trine of the Bible, out of which it may not gath- 
 er a purifying influence to the heart, — so out of 
 this doctrine of the atonement, will such a puri- 
 fying influence descend most abundantly on the 
 heart of every genuine believer. 
 ^ For, it first takes away a wall of partition, 
 which, in the case of every man who has not 
 received this doctrine, lies across the path of 
 his obedience at the very commencement. So 
 long as I think that it is quite impossible for 
 me so to run as to obtain, I will not move a 
 single footstep. Under the burden of a hope- 
 less controversy between me and God, I feel 
 as it were weighed down to the inactivity of 
 despair. 1 live without hope ; and so long as I 
 do so, I live without God in the world. And 
 besides, he, while the object of my terror, is also 
 the object of my aversion. The helpless ne- 
 cessity under which I labour, so long as the 
 question of my guilt remains unsettled, is to 
 dread the Being whom I am commanded to love. 
 I may occasionally cast a feeble regard tow ard- 
 
408 SERMON XVil. 
 
 that distant and inaccessible Lawgiver : But so 
 long as I view him shrouded in the darkness of 
 frowning majesty, 1 can place in him no trust, 
 and I can bear towards him no filial tenderness. 
 I may occasionally consult the requirements 
 of his law : But when 1 look to the uncan- 
 celled sentence that is against me, I can never 
 tread, with hopeful or assured footsteps, on the 
 career of obedience. But let me look unto 
 Christ lifted up for our offences, and see the 
 hand writing of ordinances that was against us, 
 and which was contrary unto us, nailed to his 
 cross, and there blotted out, and taken out of 
 the way ; and then I see the barrier in question 
 levelled with the ground. I now behold the 
 way of repentance cleared of the obstructions, 
 by which it was aforetime rendered utterly 
 impassable. This is the wdll of God, — even 
 your sanctification, may be sounded a thousand 
 times in the ear of an unbeUever, and leave 
 him as immoveable as it found him ; because, 
 while under a sense of unexpiated guilt, he 
 sees a mighty parapet before him, which he 
 cannot scale. But if the same words be sound- 
 ed in the ears af a believer, they will put him 
 into motion. For to him the parapet is opened 
 up, and the rough way is made smooth, and the 
 mountain and the hill are brought low, and the 
 valley of separation is filled, and he is made to 
 see the salvation of God. The path of obedi- 
 ence is made level before him. and he enters 
 
V 
 
 SERMON XVII. 409 
 
 it with the inspiration of a new and invigorating 
 principle; and that love to God, which the 
 consciousness of guik will ever keep at a dis- 
 tance from the heart, now takes up the room 
 of this terrifying, and paralysing, and alienat- 
 ing sentiment; and the reception of tlii< doc- 
 trine of atonement is just as much the turning 
 point of a new character, as it is the turning 
 point of a new hope ; and it is the very point, 
 in the history of every hiniian soul, at which 
 the alacrity of gospel obedience takes its com- 
 mencement, as well as the chetjrfulness of gos- 
 pel anticipations. Till this doctrine be be- 
 lieved, there is no attempt at obedience at all ; 
 or else, it is such an obedience as is totally 
 unanimated by the life and the love of real 
 godliness. And it is not till this doctrine has 
 taken possession of the mind, that any m in can 
 take up the language of the Psalmist, aud say, 
 " Lord, I am thy servant, I am thy servant, 
 thou hast loosed my bonds." 
 
 Conceive, then, a behever with the cai'cer of 
 obedience thus opened up and made hopeful to 
 him,— conceive him with the necessity of obe- 
 dience made just as authentically known to him, 
 as are the tidings of his deUverance froiu guilt, 
 —conceive a man who, by the act of render- 
 ing homage to the truth of God, rests a con- 
 fidence in the death of Christ for pai'don, and 
 who also, by the very same act, subscribes to 
 the sayings of Christ about repentance, and 
 
410 SERMON XVIL 
 
 the new walk of the new creature, — and theia 
 let me ask you to think of the securities which 
 encompass his mind, and protect it from the 
 delusion that we have already alluded to. We 
 have said that the peace which is felt in a vague 
 apprehension of God's mercy, and which makes 
 no account of his truth, or of his justice, has 
 the effect of making him who entertains it 
 altogether stationary, in point of acquirement. 
 With the semblance of good that he has about 
 him, he will meet the sterner attributes of the 
 Deity. For his defect of real good, he will 
 draw on the indulgent attributes of the Deity. 
 He will make the character of God, suit itself 
 to his own character, so that any stimulus to 
 advance or to perfect it, shall be practically 
 done away. And thus it is, that along the 
 whole range of human accomplishment, you 
 may observe an unvaried state of repose, — the 
 repose, in fact, of death, — for the repose of men 
 who brought to the estimate of a spiritual law, 
 will be found, to use the significant language of 
 the Bible, dead in trespasses and sins, — sinning 
 at one time without remorse, trusting at another 
 time without foundation. 
 
 Now the gospel scheme of mercy is clear of 
 this abuse altogether. It comes forth upon 
 the sinner with an antidote against this securi- 
 ty, just as strong and as prominent as is its an- 
 tidote against despair. Insomuch that the 
 state of the believer, in respect of motive and 
 
SERMON XVII. 411 
 
 of practical influence, is the very reverse ol 
 what we have now adverted to. In the act of 
 becoming a believer, he awakens from the 
 deep and the universal lethargy ol* nature. 
 With his new hope commences his new lite. 
 He ceases to be stationary, — and whm is more, 
 he never ceases to be progressive. He does 
 not satisfy himself with barely moving onwards 
 to a higher point in the scale of human attain- 
 ment, and then sitting down with the senti- 
 ment that it is enough. He never comits it 
 enough. The practical attitude of the be- 
 liever is that of one w^ho is ever looking for- 
 wards. The practical movement of the be- 
 liever is that of one who is ever pressing for- 
 wards. He could not, without a surrender of 
 those essential principles which make him what 
 he is, tarry at any one point in the gradation 
 of moral excellence. It is not more insepara- 
 ble from him to be ever doing well, than it is 
 inseparable from him to be ever aspiring to do 
 better. So that the paltry question about the 
 degrees and the comparisons of virtue, he en- 
 tertains not for a moment ; and, w ith all the 
 aids and expedients of the gospel for helping 
 his advancement, does he strenuously prosecute 
 the work of conforming to the |)recept of the 
 gospel, — to be grow ing in gi'ace, to be perfecting 
 himself in holiness. 
 
 It has been a much controverted question, 
 how far this process of continual advancement 
 
412 SERMON XVII. 
 
 will carry a believer in this world. Some af- 
 firm it will carry him to the point of absolute 
 perfection. Others more cautiously satisfy 
 themselves by the remark, that whether perfec- 
 tion be ever our attainment or not, it ought 
 always to be our aim. And one thing seems 
 to be certain, — that there is no such perfec- 
 tion in this world, as might bring along with 
 it the repose of victory. Paul counted all 
 that was behind as nothing, and he pressed 
 onwards. And it is the experience of every 
 Christian, who makes a real business of Iv 
 sanctification, that there is a struggle be- 
 tween nature and grace, even unto the end^ 
 There is no discharge from this warfare, while 
 we are in the body. To the last hour of life 
 there will be the presence of a carnal nature 
 to humble him, and to make him vigilant; and, 
 with every true Christian, there will be the 
 ascendancy of grace, so as that this nature shall 
 not have the dominion over him. The corruption 
 of the old man will be effectually resisted ; but 
 not, we fear, till the materialism of our actual 
 frames be resolved into dust, will this corruption 
 be destroyed. The flesh lusting against the 
 spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, is the short 
 but compendious description of the state of eve- 
 ry believer in the world ; — and could the evil 
 and adverse principle be eradicated, as well as 
 overborne, — could a living man bid the sinful 
 propensity, with all its workings and all its in- 
 
SERMON XVII. 413 
 
 clinations, conclusively away from him,— could 
 the authority of the new creature obtain such 
 unrivalled sway over the whole machinery of 
 the affections and the domgs, that resistance 
 was no longer felt, and the batde wzis brouglit 
 to its termination, — if it were possible, we say, 
 for a disciple, on this side of the grave, to 
 attain the eminency of a condition so glo- 
 rious, then we know not of what use to him 
 would be either a death or a resurrection, 
 or why he might not bear his (rarthly tal)er- 
 nacle to heaven, and set him down by direct 
 translation amongst the company of the celes- 
 tial. But no ! There hangs about the person 
 of the most pure and perfect Christian upon 
 earth, some mysterious necessity of dying. 
 That body, styled with such emphasis a vile 
 body, by the Apostle, must be pulverized and 
 made over again. And not till that which is 
 sown in corruption shall be raised in incor- 
 ruption, — not till that which is sown in weak- 
 ness shall be raised in power, — not till that 
 which is sown a natural body shall be raised a 
 spiritual body, — not till the soul of man occupy 
 another tenement, and the body which now 
 holds him be made to undergo some unknown 
 but glorious transformation, will he know what 
 it is to walk at perfect liberty, and, with the 
 full play of his then emancipated powers, to 
 expatiate without frailty, and without a tlaw, m 
 the service of his God. 
 
414 SERMON XVIf. 
 
 We know that the impression which manj 
 have of the disciples of the gospel is, that their 
 great and perpetual aim is, that thej may be 
 justified, — that the change of state which they 
 are ever aspiring after, is a change in their for- 
 ensic state, and not in their personal, — that if 
 they can only attain delivery from wrath, they 
 will be satisfied, — and that the only use they 
 make of Christ, is, through his means, to obtain 
 an erasure of the sentence of their condemna- 
 tion. Now, though this, undoubtedly, be one 
 great design of the gospel, it is not the design 
 in which it terminates. It may, in fact, be 
 only considered as a preparation for an ulte- 
 rior accomplishment altogether. Christ came 
 to redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify us 
 unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good 
 works. It were selfishness, under the guise of 
 sacredness, to sit down, in placid contentment, 
 with the single privilege of justification. It is 
 only the introduction to higher privileges. 
 
 But not till we submit to the righteousness of 
 Christ, as the alone meritorious plea of our ac- 
 ceptance, shall we become personally righteous 
 ourselves, — not till we see the blended love and 
 holiness of the Godhea<d, in our propitiation, 
 shall we know how to combine a confidence in 
 his mercy, with a reverence for his character, — 
 not till we look to that great transaction, by 
 which the purity of the divine nature is vindi- 
 cated, and yet the sinner is delivered from the 
 
SERMON XVII. 415 
 
 coming vengeance, shall we be freed from the 
 dominion of sin, or be led to admire and to 
 imitate the great Pattern of excellence. The 
 renewing Spirit, indeed, is withhold from all 
 those who withhold their consent from lUe doc- 
 trine of Christ, and of him crucified. Paul was 
 determined to know nothing else ; and it is in 
 this knowledge, and in this alone, that wo are 
 renewed after the image of him who created 
 us. 
 
 Now the God of peace, that brought again 
 from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shep- 
 herd of the sheep, through the blood of the 
 everlasting covenant, make you perfect m every 
 good work to do h!s will, working in you that 
 which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus 
 Christ ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. 
 Amen. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Printed bv J. k J. Hnrj^ 
 
 Nn. 138 f ii!irii-Sire»». 
 

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