nauseate, as tasteless and fatiguing, the constant recurrence of the few but all impressive simplicities of the gospel. The hearer, whose ruling desire it is to refresh and to edify the spiritual life, will no more feel distate to the nourishment that he has already taken in for the food of the soul, than to the nourishment that he has already and often taken in for the food of the body. The desire for the sincere milk of the word, is not desire for amusement that he may gratify a thirst for speculationbut a desire for aliment, that he may grow thereby. And thus it is, that what may be felt as unsufferable sameness by him who roams with delight from one prospect and one eminence to another in the scholarship of Christianity, may in fact be the staple commodity of a daily and most wholesome ministration to him who, seeking like Paul for the practical objects of an acceptance and a righteousness with God, like him counts all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of the Saviour; and like him is determined to know nothing, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Let us not therefore be prevented from detaining you a few moments longer, by the doctrine, that, however much the most perfect of the species may have to glory of in the eye of his fellows, he has nothing to glory of before God. The apostle affirms this of Abraham, a patriarch whose virtues had canonized him in the hearts of all his descendants; and who from the heights of a very remote antiquity, still stands forth to the people of this

distant age, as the most venerably attired in the worth and piety and all the primitive and sterling virtues of the older dispensation. As to his piety, of this we have no document at all, till after the time when God met him-till after that point in his history, which Paul assigns as the period of his justification by faith-till after he walked in friendship with the God who found him out an alien of nature; and stretching forth to him the hand of acceptance, shed a grace and a glory over the whole of his subsequent pilgrimage in the world. "Now if thou didst receive it, wherefore shouldst thou glory as if thou hadst not received it ?" It is this question of the apostle, which, among the varied graces and accomplishments of a Christian, perpetuates his humility, as the garb and the accompaniment of them all. "Nevertheless not me, but the grace of God that is in me," is the great principle of explanation, which applies to every virtue that springs and grows and expands into luxuriance and beauty on the character of man, after his conversion; and so keeps him humble amid all the heights of progressive excellence to which he is conducted. Certain it is, that it is not till after this period, that he acquires the right principle, or can make any right advances in the path of godliness; and that, whatever he had antecedentlywhether of affection to parents, or of patriotic regard to country, or of mild and winning affability to neighbourhood, or of upright duty in the walks either of public or relative life to society around

him, or of all that which calls forth the voice of man to testify in behalf of the virtues that are useful and agreeable to man-certain it is, that with every human being, prior to that great transition in his history which, in the face of all the ridicule excited by the term, we denominate his conversion-God is not the Being whose moral and judicial authority is practically recognised in any of these virtues, and he has nothing to glory of before God.

It is thus we should like to convince the good man of this world of his wickedness, and to warn him that the plaudits of the world's admiration here may be followed up by shame and everlasting contempt hereafter. In this visible and earthly scene, we are surrounded with human beings, all of whom are satisfied if they see in us of their own likeness; and, should we attain the average character of society, the general and collective voice of society will suffer us to pass. Meanwhile, and till God be pleased to manifest Himself, we see not God; and, not till the revelation of His likeness is made to us, do we see our deficiency from that image of unspotted holiness-to be restored to which is the great purpose of the dispensation we sit under: And thus, in spiritual blindness and spiritual insensibility, do the children of alienated nature spend their days-lifting an unabashed front and bearing a confident pretension in society, even as the patriarch Job challenged the accusation of his friends. and protested innocence and kindness and dignity before them; but who, when God Himself met his

awakened eye, and brought the overpowering lustre. of His attributes to bear upon him, said of Him whom he had only before heard of by the hearing of the ear, that, now he saw Him with the seeing of the eye, he abhorred himself and repented in dust and in ashes.

This is the sore evil under which humanity labours. It is sunk in ungodliness, while blindness hinders the seeing of it. The magnitude of the guilt is unfelt; and therefore does man persist in a most treacherous complacency. The magnitude of the danger is unseen; and therefore does man persist in a security most ruinous. There may be some transient suspicion of a hurt, but a gentle alarm may be hushed by a gentle application; and therefore the hurt, in the language of the prophet, is healed but slightly. Peace when there is no peace forms the fatal lethargy of a world lying in wickedness-a peace which we should like to break up, by setting in prospect before you now the dread realities of a future world; but a peace, which, with the vast majority we fear is never broken till these realities have encompassed them by their presence-even the sound of the last trumpet, and the appearance of celestial visitors in the sky, and all the elements in commotion, and an innumerable multitude of new risen men whose eyes have just opened on a firmament which lours preternaturally over a world that is going to expire

up,

Oh it is sad to think that pulpits should have no power of disturbance, and the voice of those who

fill them should die so impotently away from the ears of men who in a few little years will be sealed to this great catastrophe of our species-when tokens so portentous and preparations so solemn as these will mark that day of decision, which closes the epoch of time and ushers in an irrevocable eternity!

The second lesson which we should like to urge upon you is, that this disease of nature, deadly and virulent as it is, and that beyond the suspicion of those who are touched by it, is not beyond the remedy provided in the gospel. Ungodliness is the radical and pervading ingredient of this disease; and it is here said of God that He justifies the ungodly. The discharge is as ample as the debt; and the grant of pardon in every way as broad and as long, as is the guilt which requires it. The deed of amnesty is equivalent to the offence; and, foul in native and spiritual character as the transgression is, there is a commensurate righteousness which covers the whole deformity, and translates him whom it had made utterly loathsome in the sight of God, into a condition of full favour and acceptance before Him. Had justification been merely brought into contact with some social iniquity, this were not enough to relieve the conscience of him, who feels in himself the workings of a direct and spiritual iniquity against God-who is burdened with a sense of his manifold idolatries against the love of Him, who requires the heart as a willing and universal offering-and perceives of himself