loved, and into which he voluntarily compass. Is there at the very outset entered. He made his escape to it from enough of likelihood that God might be the light which he hated; and by his the author of this book, as should resolve own act did he so outrun his pursuing us upon a serious examination-then if conscience, as now to be at a distance God actually be the author, we have not from her warnings. If the call of 'repent or perish' do not bring him back-it is because he is sealed unto the day of condemnation; it is because God hath given him over to a reprobate mind; it is be cause he is judicially in a state of blindness; it is because his soul is compassed with a thick and heavy atmosphere of his own gathering. The Heathen sinner will be tried by the light which he had. The Christian sinner will be tried by the light which he fled from. This is his condemnation, that light has come into his part of the world-and he would not come to meet and be enlightened by it. He is on a footing altogether different from that of the idolater-though the darkness in which he is enveloped be irrecoverable. Enough that a light was offered which he refused -or enough that a light was once possessed, and he did not like to retain it. We have already remarked, that, in the gradual darkening and deterioration of our world from one age to another, each age became successively more ignorant of God than the preceeding; and yet with each we believe, even in the veriest wilds of savage and unwrought humanity, is there enough of light and enough of conscience, and enough of God's law in dim but remaining vestiges, to make every individual of our species a fit subject for moral examination, and for a righteous sentence consequent upon a fair and impartial trial. Now we have not practically to do with the destinies of the unconverted Heathen-nor shall we just now enter upon this region of speculation at all. But we have immediately to do with jately question which respects the immortality of our own countrymen. What is their light, and what is the degree of their condemnation if they resist it? What is the precise addition which our possession of the Bible has conferred upon our responsibility? What is the knowledge of God a acquired the knowledge of Him we might have done; and we shall be condemned accordingly, if we withhold the examination which ought to have been given. Is there enough of the character of the Divinity stamped upon its pages, that, had we only read with earnestness and pondered with earnestness, we would have beheld the traces of Him distinctly there and have been satisfied-then if, instead of so reading, we have wantonly and ignorantly reviled it, God may righteously step forth, and vindicate upon our persons, the truth of His insulted message and the honesty of His insulted messengers. If the suspicion has ever come into any of your hearts, that this ridicule of Scripture may after all be a ridicule of the Almighty; and you, instead of being arrested by the impulse of such a visitation, have, in the mad outcry of a great and growing infatuation, made your strenuous effort to keep down this compunctious feeling, and have prevailedthen have you committed yourselves, and that wilfully, to the hazards of this alternative-that either the Scripture is a fable, or you by the choice of your own hearts and the deed of your own hands have come under all the curses that are written in it. Certain it is, that, to whatever term of whatever alternative the world may commit itself in reference to Christianity, Christianity commits itself to a very distinct alternative in reference to the world -and if this religion indeed be true; and such be the actual influence of the human will upon the human understanding, that he who is willing to do God's will shall know of the doctrine of Christ that it is from God; and if faith in the gospel be at all times the fruit of moral honesty, duly exercised and sincerely in quest of what is right; and if the spirit of direction be given to him who has an upright feeling of desire to do as he ought, and to to which a conscientious and diligent pe- believe as he ought; and if every man rusal of this book might conduct us- who faithfully follows the light of his unless we like not to receive that know-conscience, is thereby conducted to a reledge which we might obtain? What is verence for his Bible and a reliance upon the knowledge of God which we throw his Bible; and if infidelity be at all times away from us by throwing this book away the issuing product of a heart careless from us-and that because we like not to about God, and utterly unconcerned either retain the knowledge which we might to retain such knowledge of Him as it has. possess? Only grant. that we are as mo- or to acquire such knowledge of Him as rally and as rightfully to blame for not it has not-then, it may not be in the acquiring the light which we might re- power of a fellow-man, under all those ceive if we had so willed it, as for not guises of candour and frankness and preserving the light which we might attain liberality which the unbeliever can put if we had so willed it; and the question on, so to feel his way through the intricabefore us is brought within a manageable cies of another's spirit, as to catch the lurking criminality and bring it out in satisfying exposure to the general eye. But let Christianity be true, and mark the fearful alternative to him who spurns it away. The unseen author of it ponders every heart; and, mysterious as its workings are to us, there is nothing in them ull that can baffle the scrutiny of Him who formed it; and if there be, as the Bible says there is, an alliance between infidelity and moral evil, He can detect it, and bring it out on the day of reckoning to open manifestation-He can unveil the whole process of this miserable delusion; and at every step of it where pride or ungodliness or selfishness or profligacy did operate its bias upon the understanding, He can make it good, and that to the conviction of the unhappy man, that his judgment was in error just because his affections were in error-that there was a want of belief in his mind, just because there was a want of worth in his character-that he was not a Christian man, just because he was not an upright man-and that the light which was in him was turned into darkness, just because he did not care to retain it; and after it was lost he did not care and did not choose to recover it. To satisfy you of a real connection between the state of man's moral principles on the one hand, and the state of his intellectual principles on the other, let us have recourse to one simple illustration. For it does require to be explained. There is many an error in judgment which implies no worldliness of character whatever. A man may have a wrong opinion in matters of trade or philosophy or law; and this altogether unconnected with any wrong habit of the life, or any wrong and depraved habit of the affections. And might not he, in like manner, have a wrong opinion on a question of theology, and be so very far in the wrong as to think Christianity a fable, and all this without any moral perversity being the cause of his error? Might it not be a mere mistake of the understanding for which he lies under no responsibility at all, at that bar where nothing is condemned that is not criminal? Where lies the greater fault of an error in a matter of speculation, and that because a man has a bad understanding, that of an error in a matter of sight, and that because a man has bad eyes? How is it that there is any connection between sentiment and sın? And let our belief be as mistaken as it may explain to us how it comes to be an affair of moral turpitude, and with what justice or upon what principles it can have the retribution of any moral vengeance awarded to it? If any of you, the victim of helpless po verty, were suddenly translated into ease and affluence-and that through a ministration of liberality left at your door by the hand of some unknown benefactorin reference to him, though utterly in the dark about his person, you may be guilty of the crime of ingratitude. To make no inquiry about him were ungrateful. To riot in the enjoyment of the gift, without one thought of concern or curiosity about the giver, were both selfish and ungrateful. To be better pleased that you did not know and have no repayment of gratitude to make, is the very essence of ingratitude; and that too in reference to an individual whose person perhaps you never saw, and whose name perhaps you never heard. To sit at greater ease without the burden of obligation upon you to any known benefactor, than you would do if he stood revealed to your apprehension, and claimed the due return of affection or of service-this is decisive of a heart tainted with the sin of ingratitude. It is sin which keeps you from enquiring; and if carefully to enquire were certainly to find, it is sin which keeps you from discovering. You want the light, and just because you hate it. You have not the knowledge of the heart that pitied and the hand that aided you, because it is a know. ledge you like not to acquire. And thus it is, that many is the man who is ignorant of God and yet lies under the full guilt and burden of ungodliness. Many is the man who with the world as his satisfying portion, never lifts one anxious inquiry after Him who made the world; and think you that his defective theology is as free of blame or condemnation, as is the defective philosophy of him who never attempted the toils of scholarship? Tell, if here a want of understanding may not resolve itself into a want of principle. He does not know God. But he does not seek to know him. His mistakes of conception regarding the Deity, or his total want of conception about Him, may be designed as mere errors of judgment, or as a mere blindness of the judgment. But it is the error and the blindness of one who wishes not to see. He grovels in ignorance; but it may be just because he grovels in corruption. He is so engrossed with the creature, that he would like to be quit of a Creator. There may be an utter absence of light, and yet may he realize all the guilt of impiety. He may stand on the verge of atheism, or even be darkling within its limits-and yet his worthlessness have the very same element with the worthlessness of him, before the eye of whose conviction God stands fully manifested, and who places himself in known defiance to his understood and authoritative voice. judgment is the sin of his heart-and that unbelief which many would screen from condemnation, is in his instance unbelief fostered by his own wilful depravity, and an unbelief for which he deserves to he execrated? But let us recur again to our illustra- | of this proceeding that the sin of his tion. The unknown friend may wish to reveal himself to the man he has befriended. He may send a messenger with a lettor to his door. He may inscribe such evidences of his authenticity there, as would force conviction if the letter was but read. He may specify the amount, and he may specify the particulars of the ministration which had been rendered; and that in such a way as to prove that he was the author of it. The bearer of the communication mav have all the marks of honesty about him-yet this be not enough. agh. He may tell a consistent story-yet this be not enough. There may be companions along with him of complexion as fair and creditable as his own to vouch for the accuracy of his statement-yet this be not enough. The last and most conclusive evidence may still be in reserve-It may lie in the substance of the written communication-and not till he to whom it is addressed has opened it and read it, may he come fully to recognise and verify his benefactor. And yet to a soul of selfishness and ingratitude, this might be an unwelcome intrusion. He may have no desire to know his benefactor; and have a dread or a dislike towards the revelation of his will; and he may spurn the messenger from his door; and he may refuse to open or to read the letter that has been offered to him; and the best evidence that there was upon the question may never have been before his eyes-not because it did not exist, but because he refused to look at it-Nay he might have read, but read in such a careless and hasty style of perusal, that he did not attain to conviction, and just because he took no pains to be convinced. And who does not see that his want of right understanding resolves into a want of right principle-that there is a taint of moral perversity in the whole And so may it be of Christianity. God may have sent a written communication to the world. And to every careful, and desirous reader, the evidence of His hand may be legibly inscribed upon it; and he who is willing to do His will, may recognise in the doctrine of Christ the traces of the divinity which inspired it; and the man on whose heart a weight of conscientiousness lies, may by the dint of patience and of prayer come to a full and rational assurance of its truth: and just because reading and enquiring and attending the ordinances, and all under the impulse of a sen e of duty, may he become a steadfast believer. But if careless about God, he will be equally careless about any revelation that professes to have come from Him. The Bible may often solicit his eye, but still remain unopened and unused by him. That book from whose pages, if explored with honesty and prayer, there might beam a celestial effulgency upon his understanding, may be held in neglect or treated with insult and derision. For aught he knows, it may be the record of the will of Him who ushered him into life, and ministers to him all its enjoyments. And if ever the thought of this possibility visited his heart, and he in the face of it joined in the infidel cry of those who deride and who disown it-then on another day may the remembrance of this visitation rise in judgment against him; and it be made clear to his own conscience, that, in spurning the Bible from his door he braved the hazards of a contest with Omnipotence. LECTURE VI. ROMANS ii, 1-12. "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things But we are sure that the judgment of God is ac cording to truth against them which comunit such things. And thinkest thou this. O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering: not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? but, after thy hardness and impenntent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath: tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil. of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace. to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law." BEFORE proceeding to the exposition concluding verse in the last chapter, that, of this chapter, it may be remarked of the with all the blindness which the apostle charges on the heathen, and with all the | Insomuch that, let missionaries go to the dislike of retaining God in their know- very extremity of our species, and speak ledge which he ascribes to them-there of sin and judgment and condemnation, was still one particular of this knowledge which they did retain. They still knew as much of God's judgment, as to be conscious that what they were doing, in the sinfulness and reprobacy of their minds, was worthy of death. There was still a remainder of conscience about them, in virtue of which they felt that there were a sin and a condemnation which attached to their own persons. With all the obliteration which had come upon their moral faculties-there were still the traces of a law which they could obscurely read, and of a voice which faintly uttered itself in notes of disapprobation. They were conscious that all was not right about them; and had the impression of a being greater than themselves, to whose account they were responsible; and the idea of a reckoning and of a sentence were not altogether strange to their understanding. For still, in the most sunken ages of our decaying and deteriorating species, did each man carry about with him such a light as, if he did not follow it, would render him a sinner-not against such principles as were altogether hidden, but against such principles as were partly known to him. And such vestiges of a natural sense about the right and the wrong, may not only be gathered from the books of Pagan antiquity; but they may be still more satisfactorily educted, from the converse that we hold in the present day with the living Paganism which still abounds in our world. We know not a more deeply interesting walk of observation, than that which is prosecuted by modern missionaries, when they come into contact and con.munication with the men of a still unbroken country-when they make their lodgment on one of the remote and yet untravelled wilds of Paganism-when, after the interval of four thousand years from the dispersion of the great family of mankind, they go to one of its most widely diverging branches, and ascertain what of conscience or what of religious light has among them survived the lapse of so many generations-when they thus, as it were, knock at the door of nature left for ages to itself, and try if there yet be slumbering any sense or intelligence there which can at all respond to the message they have brought along with them. Nor do we know an evolution of the human heart which carries in it more of a big and an affecting interest, than that on which philosophy has never cast an enquiring regard-even that among its dark and long unentered recesses, there still subsists an undying voice, which owns the comfort and echoes back the truth of Christianity. 5 they do not speak in vocables unknown; and sweet to many a soul is the preacher's voice, when he tells that unto them a Saviour is born; and, out of the relics of even this deep and settled degeneracy, can be gotten the materials of a satisfying demonstration; and thus in the very darkest places have converts multiplied, and Christian villages arisen, and the gospel been the savour of life unto life to the some who have embraced it, and been the savour of death unto death to the many who have declined it-all proving that a principle still existed in their bosoms, which if they followed would guide them to salvation, and which if they fled from would try them and find them to be guilty. Nor let us wonder therefore, that the apostle, even when speaking of those who are given over to every abomination, should still affirm of them that they know the judgments of God. Even a remainder of that knowledge which they liked not to retain, still kept its hold upon their conscience and gave them a responsibility which belongs not to the beasts that perish. Man, in short, throughout the whole of this world's peopled territory, has a law by which he may righteously be judged; and still enough of it is known and felt by his own conscience to make it out, that for its violation he should be righteously condemned. So that, dark as our conceptions may be of the present character and future fate of those who live under the shadow of heathenism, we may be sure that a clear and righteous principle of retribution will be applied to them all; and that they who shall be judged worthy of death on that day will be found to have committed such things, as they themselves either knew or might have known to be worthy of it. There is still another phrase in the verse which may require to be adverted to. It is there said of the people who committed things worthy of death, that they not only did the same, but had pleasure in them that did them. This last marks a higher and a more formed depravity, than the direct commission of that which is evil. Το be hurried along by the violence of passion into some deed of licentiousness, may consist with the state of a mind that feels its own degradation, and mourns over the infirmity of its purposes. But to look with connivance and delight on the sin of others -to have pleasure in their companionship and to spirit them on in the ways of disobedience, after perhaps the urgency which prompted his own career of it has abated-this argues, not the subjection of one faculty to another, but the subjection Library of the of the whole man to sin, viewed as an ob- obtain an interview with the people of his ject of full and formal approbation. This own nation; and that, as his practice was a reprobacy of the mind, to which the in other places, he began his explanation old are sometimes given over, after they of the gospel in the hearing of the Jews have run their course of dissipation. At the outset, even of this lawless history, was there a struggling principle within them, which debated, and, for a time, parried off the question of indulgence; and after they entered on the transgressor's path, did they taste the bitterness of many a compunctious visitation. But under that hardening process, which we have already explained, the conscience at length lost its tenderness, and all its pangs and all its remonstrances were forgotten; and, from one year to another, can the voluptuary, more abandoned than before, lift a louder and a louder defiance to the authority which at one time overawed him. But never, perhaps, does he betray such a fatal symptom of one who is indeed given over, as when age, with all its ailing helplessness, has at length overtaken him; and he can now only smile at the remembrance of joys which he can no longer realize; and the young who assemble at his festive board, are by him cheered forward on that way of destruction, to the end of which he is so fast hastening; and the poison of his own indelicacy spreads its vitiating influence over the unpractised guests who are around him. Depravity so unfeeling as this, which goes to augment its own votaries and its own victims, and to perpetuate a legacy in hell from one rebellious generation to another, was daily and currently exemplified in the manners of an age which has now passed by. And if, in the progress of an external or fashionable reformation, it now be nearly unknown, let the record of it at least serve to mark, how even an individual conscience can wither in its possessor's bosom to the very margin of extinction; and how cre he leaves the world he can bequeath to it an increase of degencracy, adding his own seductive testimony to all the other engines of corruption which are already at work in it-thus serving to explain, not merely how guilt is ever growing in power and ascendancy over the habits of a single man, but how it deepens and accumulates and rises into magnitude more appalling, along the line of the advancing history of our species. Before entering upon the exposition of the verses which have now been read in your hearing, let it be remarked, that the special design of the writer of this epistle begins to open into clearer manifestation. The fact is, that it was written to the believers in Rome, before he ever had made a personal appearance in that city. We know from the book of Acts, that, upon his arrival there, it was his first care to and then turned himself also unto the Gentiles. Certain it is, that in this written communication, the main purport of the argument, is to conciliate the Jews to the faith of the gospel. It is to make them understand, that, in respect of their need of salvation, they were on a footing just as helpless as that of the Gentiles; that a like sentence of wrath had gone out against both; and a like process of recovery was indispensable to both. For the accomplishment of this object, he makes, we apprehend, a very skilful approach to the Jewish understanding. Throughout the whole of his wr ings, in fact, do we see that he abounded in wise but honourable devices, for the purpose of giving weight and acceptance to his reasonings. He was all things to all men, not to the extent of surrendering any particle of truth to their prejudices, but to the extent of doing all that might be fairly or inno. cently done, for the purpose of softening and surprising them out of their prejudi ces. The picture which he draws in the first chapter, is a picture of the Gentile world; and its most conspicuous lineaments are those of Gentile profligacy; and in laying it before the eye of a Jewish observer, he in fact deals with him even as Nathan did with David, when he offered him a disguised representation of his own character, and turned the indignation which he had prevously kindled in the bosom of the monarch upon his own head. For you will observe that though the most prominent features of the apostolic sketch, are drawn from the abominations and the excesses of Heathenism, there are others which are descriptive, not of any special, but of that universal corruption, which may be read and recognised on the person of every member of the human family. The common depravities of our race are made to enter into the enumeration, along with those which are more monstrous and unnatural; and the vices which are chargeable upon all, are mixed up in the same catalogue with the vices which are chargeable upon some; and the Jew, heedless of those traits of the description which may be fastened on himself, is thus caught, as it were, into an indignation which may be retorted back again upon his own character. It is thus that the apostle begins this second chapter, much in the way in which the prophet of the Old Testament prosecuted the advantage that he had won over David, whose resentment he had kindled against an act of oppression, which he himself had both imitated and outdone. "Thou art the |