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life of everlasting woe. There seems to be nothing in labouring for that which is perishable to bring down such a doom; but then if it involve criminality, if it incur the taste for all moral delinquency, then you see it would seem to be a more appropriate termination of such a life that should be landed in unutterable anguish and intense woe, which is never to be at an end. It is, however, impossible that I can enter upon that. If I were to do so, it would not only be to exceed the lesson presented by the text, but it would be to exceed that limit which could be given to any address; it is, however, a correct doctrine, and could be most triumphantly proved in vindicating the jurisprudence of God. I am sure that you are perfectly aware of the criminality of sowing unto the flesh in reference to a fellow mortal. If any friend were to give you an independent fortune, all you desired, and you rebelled against him and returned evil for good, you would know very well how to appreciate the moral turpitude of such indifference and ingratitude. Well, then, I say that the moral turpitude of your habitual indifference and ingratitude to that God who gives you every comfort you enjoy will be one of the highest crimes of man, when the actions of all come to be reckoned over, and which will mark God to be justified when he speaketh, and clear when he judgeth, and show that we have been the authors of own undoing and condemnation; and that by living thus lightly we have been incurring the charge of the highest possible delinquency of which we can be guilty, and those who are guilty will be sent to their own place, when they are sent down to the abodes of everlasting hopelessness.

As we are not, however, expostulating on that, I shall conclude with as short a practical improvement on the subject as I can. This is of mighty importance to be understood. There are two classes of persons pointed out here whom I should like to address. There is one class that is alienated from the whole subject; they do not profess Christianity, are strangers to the peculiarities of it altogether. They do not belong to what is called the "professing Church," but they devote themselves to a life of strife and of care for the things of this world, and have [No. 3.]

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no wish to be religious. Why, then, I would say that it is of mighty importance to lay bare to these people the turpitude of their moral and spiritual condition, and of the habits in which they spend their time, because, unless we can convince them of this, they may continue unrepenting and unrepented. They conceive it to be a very slight thing that their life should be thus spent in ungodliness, and conceiving it to be a slight thing, they think that a very slight and superficial remedy will be quite sufficient for them. The connection there is between the imagination of a slight disease and the application of a slight remedy is quite obvious. That man will not submit his sore to amputation or to the caustic which he will not permit to be probed to the bottom. But if he is determined to consider that the injury is only superficial, which is the case of every worldly man, he will be content that the application of the cure should be superficial also. And it is with the hurt of the soul as it is with the hurt of the body;—the malady under which it labours may be fatal; yet if the patient do not think so he will be glad to put off the application of a severe remedy, and be content with the mildest sanative. That peace which may be but gently ruffled, may only need a very gentle soothing to restore it to composure. The alarm which comes in the shape of a rare and transient zephyr may be easily hushed, and the vessel, which in a tempest would be driven from her moorings, may retain her place in a calm with very slender anchorage. Thus it is, in fact, that men underrate the virulence of the disease under which they labour, and, therefore, they feel but slightly the hurt of their souls, and they will not go to that Physician, who is himself the Lamb of God, and who tells them to wash out their sins in his own blood, and points out to them, nay, beckons them to approach to that fountain of purification which has been opened up to the House of David. They are not disposed to apply to that satisfying and substantial atonement-they care not for the virtue of that remedy by which alone the virulence even of their foulest guilt can be done away with. And still less have they the desire, or do they ever make a demand for, the operation of that regenerating power which might, entering the heart and reaching the depth of the native

ungodliness which is seated there, turn all their affections from the world to God. They have no desire to be translated and brought into that habit of virtue in which they would be of sowing unto the Spirit, that they might reap of the Spirit a life everlasting. A reformation far more superficial than this will satisfy them. They will have nothing to do with the mystery of the new birth. They will look another way and go another way for a safe eternity, than what they deem the dark and dreary passage of spiritual distress; and then the conversion of the soul through the influence of the Holy Ghost, and then a translation from darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel, and then a general revolution of their whole hearts and habits so as to have themselves formed into a peculiar people, who sow unto the Spirit, whose conversation is in heaven, and whose great business on earth is to be perfect in their holiness and to prepare for heaven-all this they nauseate and refuse, even though it should bear a semblance to the doctrine of Scripture, and be couched in what they call a confused and cabalistic phraseology. They therefore defer the whole question of eternity, or take their own way of resolving it, and so with all their portion and all their treasure upon earth as heretofore, and a still untouched and unsubdued earthly spirit within them, they would lean on the strength of a few forms and decencies, and of some slender reformations, to get to heaven as comfortably as they can. This is the foundation on which they rest. Such is their meagre and superficial notions of what the real business and drift of Christianity is-to make men new creatures in Christ Jesus, that henceforth you may cease from sowing to the flesh, and that you may sow to the Spirit. But it is not in this meagre and superficial way the breach between God and the guilty is to be healed. God is the party sinned against, and it is for him and not for us to dictate the terms of the treaty of reconciliation. Slightly as we look upon our defection from God and on the diseases of our fallen nature they are not so lightly looked upon in heaven. That mystery of redemption, which prophets scanned, which angels desire to look into, which the Son of God himself completed, and none but he could undertake, and which

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cost him a humbling incarnation, and the deep endurance of a guilty world's punishment, when the vials of God's wrathful justice were poured out, which, amid the manifestation by miracles of its divinity, was preached by the Holy Apostles to the nations of the earth, and which is nowhere trusted in by man without a surrender of his heart to the will of God, and so a complete moral renovation of his habits and his character: this is the only way in which the acceptance of the sinner has been made to harmonize with the honours of offended justice, or in which the Law Giver can, without compromise of that dignity and high imperial power which belongs to him, as the Lord of the creation, and which it were the anarchy of the universe to violate, the only way in which he can pass over our transgressions against the law. But, now that the way has been opened, the ungodliest and most worldly of you all, although he may have grown grey in iniquity, whatever may be the guilt and crimson die of manifold transgressions, I say, now that the way is opened, you are all freely invited to draw near, and we are charged with offers of peace, and pardon, from the mercy-seat, to the guiltiest of you all. A full amnesty is prepared, even for the deadliest of your transgressions, by him who took upon himself the retribution of your sins, and now makes the offer of a title to the inheritance of his righteousness. By his sacrifice he has made you meet in condition for pardon, and by his Spirit he can make you meet in person and character for the presence of God. If you are conformed to the new economy of the Gospel, and trusting in the love of God as your reconciled Father, you are constrained by the moral force of a contemplation so delightful, to cease from sowing to the flesh, and to love him again, and by the ascendant power of this new affection in your heart to sow every day unto the Spirit, you will run with the alacrity of a heaven-born influence in the way of God's mandments.

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I have just one word to say to those who think favourably of the truth, and that they are in the faith: You are fond of the phraseology,-you like exceedingly to talk of being justified by faith or sound in the orthodoxy of your creed, but perhaps you are not aware how high a standard

the standard of practical godliness is. Are you dying unto the world? Are you living under a full conviction that you are living to God? Are your affections set on things above, and not on things of this world? Are you sowing not unto the flesh, but unto the spirit? Are you ceasing to be carnal, and looking beyond the things which are seen and which are temporal, to the things which are unseen and which are eternal? It is a most grievous thing, my brethren, to see the total inexperience of all these things in numbers of what is called the " professing church.' Be assured, my brethren, that in this age of ostensible profession, the call to a high standard of practical and spiritual Christianity is most urgently required. Profession, mere profession, brings a world of delusion in its train: the form of godliness without the power -a mere tacit assent to the faith without what is expressively called the obedience of faith-the Sabbath ordinances of religion without the weekday duties of religion-a pleasure, it may be, in the society of those called Christians, and in the services of religion, without the expense of that self-denial and steadfastness of walking in the work of the Lord, which the Saviour has laid on his followers.

To a man such as I have just described, the kingdom of God has come in word only, but not in power; he may be delighted, perhaps, with the doctrines of grace in a sermon, but there may not be one inch of progress made by him towards the clean heart and the right spirit; pleased and lulled Sabbath after Sabbath, as with the sound of a pleasant song, he may attend the ordinances of God, yet giving all his energies throughout the week, afterwards, with an entire unbroken affection to the world; repairing to the house of God as if it were the gate of heaven, yet going back with a renewed tenacity to hold faster to the affections and interests of the earth; running after gospel ministers and sitting in the house of God with all propriety, and great content and complacency under them, and yet an utter stranger to the close walk and spiritual exercises of the altogether Christian. Oh, my brethren, it looks so promising to hear the city bells and to see every family and house pouring forth its worshippers on the Sabbath morning-to look to the avenues that lead