in a smoke of abomination before Him-for Him to have done so at the very time that all flesh had corrupted its ways, and when, either with or without the law of revelation, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually-in these circumstances of deep and unalleviated provocation, and when God might have eased Him of His adversaries, by sweeping the whole of this moral nuisance away from the face of the universe which it deformed-for such a time to have been a time of love, when majesty seemed to call for some solemn vindication, but mercy could not let us go-surely, if through such a barrier between God and the guilty, He, in the longings of His desire after them, forced a pathway of reconciliation, He never will turn Himself away from any, who, cheered forward by His own entreaties, are walking upon that path. But if, when enemies He Himself found out an approach by which He might beckon them to enter into peace with Him, how much more, when they are so approaching, will He meet them with the light of His countenance, and bless them with the joys of His salvation.

But this argument may be looked to in another way. Instead of fixing our regards upon that point in the general history of the world, when the avenue was struck out between our species and their offended Lawgiver; and through the rent veil of a Saviour's flesh, a free and consecrated

way of access was opened for the guiltiest of them all-let a believer in Christ fix his regards upon that passage in his own personal history at which he was drawn in his desires and in his confidence to this great Mediator, and entered upon the grace wherein he now stands, and gave up his evil heart of unbelief, and made his transition out of darkness to the marvellous light of the gospel. Let him compare what he was, when an alien from God, through wicked works of his own, with what he is when a humble but confiding expectant of God's mercy through the righteousness of another. Who translated him into the condition which he now occupies? Who put into his heart the faith of the gospel? Who awakened him from the dormancy and unconcern of nature? Who stirred up that restless but salutary alarm which at length issued in the secure feeling of reconciliation ? There was a time of his past life when the whole doctrine of salvation was an offence to him; when its preaching was foolishness to his ears; when its phraseology tired and disgusted him; when, in light and lawless companionship, he put the warnings of religious counsel, and the urgency of menacing sermons away from his bosom-a time when the world was his all, and when he was wholly given over to the idolatry of its pursuits and pleasures and projects of aggrandisement-a time when his heart was unvisited with any permanent seriousness about God, of whom his conscience sometimes reminded him, but whom he soon dismissed

from his earnest contemplation-a time when he may have occasionally heard of a judgment, but without one practical movement of his soul towards the task of preparation—a time when the overtures of peace met him on his way, but which he, in the impetuous prosecution of his own objects, utterly disregarded a time when death plied him with its ever-recurring mementoes, but which he, overlooking the short and summary arithmetic of the few little years that lay between him and the last messenger, placed so far on the back ground of his anticipation, that this earth, this passing and perishable earth, formed the scene of all his solicitudes. Is there none here present who remembers such a time of his bygone history, and with such a character of alienation from God and from His Christ, as we have now given to it? And who, we ask, recalled him from this alienation? By whose guidance was he conducted to that demonstration either of the press or of the pulpit, which awakened him? Who sent that afflictive visitation to his door, which weaned his spirit from the world, and wooed it to the deathless friendships, and the ever-during felicities of heaven? Who made known to him the extent of his guilt, with the overpassing extent of the redemption that is provided for it? It was not he himself who originated the process of his own salvation. God might have abandoned him to his own courses; and said of him, as He has done of many others, "I will let him alone, since he will have it so;" and given him up to that

judicial blindness, under which the vast majority of the world are now sleeping in profoundest lethargy; and withheld altogether that light of the Spirit, which he had done so much to extinguish. But if, instead of all this, God kept by him in the midst of his thankless provocations and, while he was yet a regardless enemy, made His designs of grace to bear upon him-and, throughout all the mazes of his checkered history, conducted him to the knowledge of Himself as a reconciling God-and so softened his heart with family bereavements, or so tore it from all its worldly dependencies by the disasters of business, or so shook it with frightful agitation by the terrors of the law, or so shone upon it with the light of His free Spirit, as made it glad to escape from the treachery of nature's joys and nature's promises, into a relying faith on the offers and assurances of the gospel-why, just let him think of the time when God did so much for him and then think of the impossibility that God will recede from him now; or that He will cease from the prosecution of that work in circumstances of earnest and desirous concurrence on the part of the believer, which He Himself begun in the circumstances either of his torpid unconcern, or of his active and haughty defiance. The God who moved towards him in his days of forgetfulness, will not move away from him in his days of hourly and habitual remembrance-and He who intercepted him in his career of rebellion, will not withdraw from him in his career of new

obedience-and He who first knocked at the door of his conscience, and that too in a prayerless and thankless and regardless season of his history, will not, now that he prays in the name of Christ, and now that his heart is set upon salvation, and now that the doctrine of grace forms all his joy and all his dependence; He who thus found him a distant and exiled rebel, will not abandon him now that his fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. It is thus, that the believer may shield his misgiving heart from all its despondencies. It is thus, that the argument of the text goes to fortify his faith, and to perfect that which is lacking in it. It is thus that the how much more' of the apostle should cause him to abound more and more in the peace and the joy of believing-and should encourage every man who has laid hold on the hope set before us, to steady and confirm his hold still more tenaciously than before, so as to keep it fast and sure even unto the end.

With a man who knows himself to be a believer, this argument is quite irresistible; and it will go to establish his faith, and to strengthen it, and to settle it, and to make it perfect. But it is possible for a man really to believe, and yet to be in ignorance for a time whether he does so or not-and it is possible for a man to be in earnest about his soul, and yet not to have received that truth which is unto salvation-and it is possible for him to be actuated by a strong general desire to be right, and yet to be walking among the elements of uncertainty