of persecuting violence; and yet whose courage fails them every day, in the softer scenes of their social and domestic history. The man who under the excitements of a formal and furious persecution, were brave enough to be a dying witness to the truth as it is in Jesus, crouches into all the timidity of silence under the omnipotency of fashion; and ashamed of the Saviour and His words, recoils in daily and familiar conversation from the avowals of a living witness for His name. There is as much of the truly heroic in not being ashamed of the profession of the gospel, as in not being afraid of it. Paul was neither: and yet when we think of what he once was in literature; and how aware he must have been of the loftiness of its contempt for the doctrine of a crucified Saviour; and that in Rome the whole power and bitterness of its derisions were awaiting him; and that the main weapon with which he had to confront it was such an argument as looked to be foolishness to the wisdom of this world-we doubt not that the disdain inflicted by philosophy, was naturally as formidable to the mind of this apostle, as the death. inflicted by the arm of bloody violence. So that even now, and in an age when Christianity has no penalties and no proscriptions to keep her down, still, if all that deserves the name of Christianity be exploded from conversation—if a visible embarrassment run through a company, when its piety or its doctrine is introduced among them-if, among beings rapidly moving towards immortality, any

serious allusion to the concerns of immortality stamps an oddity on the character of him who brings it forward-if, through a tacit but firm compact which regulates the intercourse of this world, the gospel is as effectually banished from the ordinary converse of society, as by the edicts of tyranny the profession of it was banished in the days of Claudius from Rome:-then he who would walk in his Christian integrity among the men of this lukewarm and degenerate age-he who would do all and say all in the name of Jesus-he who, in obedience to his Bible, would season with grace and with that which is to the use of edifying the whole tenor of his communications-he, in short, who, rising above that meagre and mitigated Christianity, which is as remote as Paganism from the real Christianity of the New Testament, would, out of the abundance of his heart, without shrinking and without shame, speak of the things which pertain to the kingdom of God-he will find that there are trials still, which, to some temperaments, are as fierce and as fiery as any in the days of martyrdom; and that, however in some select and peculiar walk he may find a few to sympathise with him, yet many are the families and many are the circles of companionship, where the persecution of contempt calls for determination as strenuous, and for firmness as manly, as ever in the most intolerant ages of our church did the persecution of direct and personal violence.

And let it be remarked too, that, in becoming a

Christian now, the same transition is to be made from one style of sentiment to another, which was made by the apostle. It is as much the effort of nature, as it ever was of a corrupt and ignorant Judaism, to seek to establish a righteousness of its own; and, in passing from a state of nature to that of grace, there must still be a renouncing of that righteousness, and a transference of our trust and of our entire dependence to another. Now, in the act of making that passage, there is also the very same encounter with this world's ridicule and observation, which the apostle had to brave; and which, on the strength of right and resolute principle, the apostle overcame. The man who hopes to get to heaven by a good life, and who professes himself to be secure on the strength of his many virtues and his many decencies, and who dislikes both the mystery and the seriousness which stand associated with the doctrine of salvation by faith alone—such a man has no more Christianity, than what he may easily and familiarly show-and in sporting such sentiments, even among the most giddy and unthinking of this world's generations he will neither disgrace himself by singularity nor be resisted as the author of any invasion whatever on the general style and spirit of this world's companies. But should he pass from this condition, which is neither more nor less than that of a Pharisee in disguise; and, struck by a sense of spiritual nakedness, flee for refuge to another righteousness than his own; and seek for justification by

faith, a privilege which is rendered to faith; and profess now, that he hopes to get to heaven by the obedience unto death which has been rendered for him by the great Mediator—such a style of utterance as this, would serve greatly more to peculiarize a man among the conversations of society-these are the words of Christ of which he is greatly apt to be more ashamed. A temptation meets him here, which no doubt met the apostle, when his Christianity first came to be known among those fellow-students who had been trained along with him at the feet of Gamaliel; and it is at that point when, for the Jewish principle of self-righteousness he adopts the evangelical principle of justification by faith-it is then that he becomes more an outcast than before, from the toleration and the sympathy of unconverted men.

Let the same consideration uphold such that upheld the mind of the apostle. All that you possibly can do, for the purpose of substantiating a claim upon Heaven, is but the weakness of man, idly straining after a salvation which he will miss. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; and, however simple the expedient, the power and the promise of God are on the side of your obtaining salvation which will certainly be accomplished. The Syrian was affronted when told to dip himself in Jordan for the cure of his leprosy; and to many in like manner is it a subject of offence, when told to wash out their sins in the blood of the atonement -calling on the name of the Lord. But the same

power which gave efficacy to the one expedient, gives efficacy to the other; and in such a way too, as to invest that method of salvation which looks meanness and foolishness to the natural eye-to invest it with the solemn venerable imposing character of God's asserted majesty, of God's proclaimed and vindicated righteousness.

And here let us remark the whole import of the term salvation. The power of God in the achievement of it was put forth in something more than in bowing down the Divinity upon our world, and there causing it to sustain the burden of the world's atonement-in something more than the conflicts of the garden or the agonies of the cross-in something more than the resurrection of the crucified Saviour from His tomb-in something more than the consequent expunging of every believer's name from the book of condemnation, and the inscribing of it in the book of life. There is a power put forth on the person of believers. There is the working of a mighty power to usward who believe. There is the achievement of a spiritual resurrection upon every one of them. By the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, the power of which is applied to every soul that has faith, there is a cleansing of that soul from its moral and spiritual leprosy. And hence a connection between two things, which to the world's eye looks incomprehensible

-a connection between faith, which it might be feared would have led to indolent security on the one hand, and a most thorough substantial pervad