called to converse with an aged man, for the first time, on the things which belong unto his peace. They find that opinions, which have been the growth, perhaps, of an ordinary life, have entirely possessed themselves of his mind; alike indisposing him either for unlearning what is false, or for acquiring a knowledge of that which is true: so that, in however many lights they may place the gospel-way of salvation, his mind does not readily embrace it, because already pre-engaged with some other way. The doctrine of a sinner's acceptance through faith in the blood of Christ, is like a new language to him; his understanding appreciates not the necessity of such a doctrine; and, when taken in connection with that changed state of his moral affections required by the gospel, his heart is unwilling to submit to it: so that, at every pause in our exhortation to him to stay his soul on the Savior's righteousness, some expression falls from his lips evincing a continued dependence on his own.

But, brethren, if it be a hard thing merely to instruct the hoary head in the way of righteousness; if every year of delayed conversion lessens our capacity even to comprehend God's method of pardoning and restoring sinners; how immeasurably more difficult shall we find it to fulfil that other requirement of heaven, the SANCTIFICATION of the heart! to plant, in this overrun and howling waste, the seeds of that holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord! For, in order to this, we have not only to expel the love of the world, to break the associated chain of past enjoyments, to undo all, as all had never been; but we have to form a new habit in the soul, to make every thing yield to the power of a new affection, and to bind every disobedient and traitorous thought in sweet captivity to the will of God. But, would either reason or experience teach us that this can be an easy task? Do we not all know the moral force of habit? that mysterious suggestive faculty, whereby our actions, whether good or evil, reproduce and perpetuate themselves; till, at last, they become as integral portions of our moral being, and lord it over our souls with the tyranny of a second nature. Indeed, to estimate, in some degree, the difficulty of ef fecting a revolution such as that supposed by gospel-sanctification, it is only needful to single out any one from the prevalent habits and dispositions of life, and to count the time and cost of changing it for another, which should be opposite. Let the clenched hand of parsimony learn to practise a liberal and enlarged munificence; let the boaster of high degree turn a contemptuous eye on all the relics of ancestral pride; and we may then imagine how hard it is for these habit-dyed Ethiopians to change their skins, or these sin-marked leopards to efface their spots!

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The probability, therefore, that a postponed repentance will ever be an effectual or sincere repentance, may be put to an easy test. If, in a dying hour; if, in the day of the mind's feebleness, and decay, and waste; if, in a brief remnant, cut off from a life of worldliness, or sleep, or sin, the soul can evoke into existence a new order of affections, and, in the twinkling of an eye, put on its dress for heaven; we need moralize no longer on the perils of spiritual delay; we may let conscience sleep on in the lap of the great thief of time, saying, for this time, let us eat and drink," and hereafter we can repent and die. But if, on the contrary, worldly habits strike root downwards, the more they bear fruit upwards; if sanctification demands that every ancient idol fall and be crushed before the ark of God; and if time, if labor, if holy and persevering effort, be needed to educate immortal spirits for the skies; then, was ever folly like his folly, who, with a conviction that his soul is at this moment lying under the wrath of God, would say to the messenger of heaven, whoever he may be, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee?"

Neither are the results of experience, as collected from those who are in the habit of attending the closing scenes of life, at all opposed to the conclusions of antecedent reasoning. Physicians concur with Divines in attesting, that men, for the most part, die as they live, and that the exhaustion of nature's strength alone frequently incapacitates them for any essential change in the state and affections of the mind. Thus, those who live the life of the unrighteous, die the death of the unrighteous also; the power of unbelief is as victorious in the dying hour, as in the hours of health; sin, the world, and the devil hold their victims in strong delusion to the last; and that Savior, who, through life, had been regarded as "a root out of a dry ground," appears, even in death, to be destitute of all "form and comeliness."

Let us conclude with one or two practical reflections: - First, how great is the danger of resisting religious convictions! of turning a deaf ear to language, which, by its effects on our minds, is discerned to be the voice of God! It is not needful that we should have a Paul preaching before us, or a Drusilla seated beside us, in order that words uttered in the sanctuary should appear to have been so expressly written for us, to have come home to our consciences with so much of closeness and of power, that, although we could not send the preacher away, we were but too willing to be sent away by the preacher; hailing with gladness the breaking up of the solemn assembly, welcoming with eagerness the in-rushing current of worldly thoughts, and giving a tacit promise to our consciences to call for these holy convictions at some

more convenient season. But, how know we that these convictions will come when we call them? Where is our warrant for supposing that the Holy Spirit will bide our time; will tarry our convenience; will wait the day when we, having nothing else to occupy us, will permit him to rekindle his quenched flame, and to repeat the warnings which we neglected or despised before? Surely, all experience would look the other way; would teach, that convictions lose their power when they lose their freshness. Felix, we are told, heard Paul preach many times afterwards; but we do not find that he ever TREMBLED after the first.

Lastly, how great is the affront to God, of this intention to yield to religious convictions hereafter! To delay our preparation for heaven is not a foolish thing only, not a dangerous thing only; it is a profane, a wicked, a God-dishonoring thing. We cannot purpose to amend our lives to-morrow, without also purposing to insult God to-day. To tell God that we mean to repent next year, is to tell him that we do not mean to repent before. We may keep our resolution, or we may not keep it; but the mere forming of it implies that, until the time specified arrives, we intend to go on sinning still, to make more work for his pardoning mercy in the interim; cutting out, as it were, a space from the term of our moral probation, and bargaining with high heaven for an indulgence for prospective sin.

Hear we, then, the conclusion of the whole matter, which we may fairly sum up, in a single sentence, thus: that REPENTANCE DELAYED IS MERCY TRIFLED WITH, and A HOLY LIFE INTENDED ONLY, IS LIFE ETERNAL LOST. To say to any religious conviction, "Go thy way for this time," is to degrade reason, to injure the soul, to disparage heaven, to dishonor God. It is as if we designed to give God the worst of our days, and spend on self and sin the best; to reserve a lamb of the first year for the world, and to bring to the Lord only the maimed and the blind: it is to offer at the shrine of the evil one our manhood, our vigor, our freshness, our strength; and to lay on the altar of the God of heaven an offering of disease, decay, old age, and mental feebleness. God grant that we may bring no more of these vain oblations; but now, in the accepted time, now, in our convenient season, may "offer an offering in righteousness, and call upon the name of the Lord!" Amen.

SERMON V
VIII.

CHRISTIANITY A SYSTEM OF LOVE.

BY REV. JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

"By love serve one another."-GALATIANS v. 13.

CHRISTIANITY is a system of love, of love in its purest, brightest, and divinest form. It is an emanation from the mind and heart of infinite and eternal Benevolence. Its doctrines are the truths of love; its principles are the rules of love; its invitations are the offers of love; its promises are the assurances of love; its very threatenings are the severities of love; and its one great design is, to expel selfishness from the human bosom, and to plant in its room a principle of holy and univer sal philanthropy. Hence a man may be so intimately acquainted with all the evidences of this Divine system, as to be enabled, by the most powerful and subtle logic, to defend its outworks against the attacks of infidelity; he may understand, and be able to arrange all its doctrines as articles of faith in the most symmetrical order; he may also be able to harmonize seeming discrepancies and contradictions; but still, if he know not that the essence of Christianity is love, he has no sympathy within his inner soul, he has mistaken its genius and its spirit, and is as blind to its richest glories, as the individual whose darkened eye-balle never look on the glories of the sky, nor the beauties of the earth. My subject is in harmony with the feelings of my own heart, with the movements of the day, and with the design for which we are assembled this evening. The text is love; and I hope the sermon will, in accordance with the text, be love also.

In the first place, I shall endeavor to explain the nature, and to exhibit the grounds and manifestations of Christian love; in the second place, show some of the reasons why the different denominations of professing Christians should exercise this love one to another; thirdly, point out the manner in which we may manifest this disposition, and then urge a few appropriate and cogent motives.

I. In the first place, I am to explain the nature and exhibit the grounds and exercises of Christian love.

That artificer, as it has been called, of deification, the corrupt soul of man, never once, amidst all its multiplied devices, struck out the idea of absolute goodness. And how should it? All its prototypes

for the formation of its gods, were founded on itself—on its own passions. But what idolatry could not do, and human reason in the highest stretch of its powers could never approach, the apostle, in one beautiful expression, has set before us-"God is love." This we owe to Revelation, and it never could have come from any other source. The love of God is not an infinite quietism of the Divine mind, retired from all human affairs and leaving the world to take care of itself; it is an active principle.

There are two kinds of love in the Divine mind; the love of complacency, which it bears to all the holy parts of creation, and the love of benevolence, which it bears to the whole creation irrespective of moral character. Analogous to this, there is in the mind of every good man, a two-fold love; the love of complacency, which he always bears towards the righteous, and the love of benevolence, which he is to bear to the whole sentient creation. The apostle distinguishes these two, where he says, add "to brotherly kindness, charity." Beyond that inner circle, where brotherly kindness "lives and moves and has its being," there is an outer circle, in which charity also is to revolve and perform its part. And, be it recollected, that we are to be no less assiduous in the duties of the outer circle, than we are in those of the inner; and that man, whatever his professions to brotherly kindness may be, has but the name who adds not to it charity.

Look at the operations of charity, or the love of benevolence. It was this which existed in the mind of Deity from eternity, and in the exercise of which he so loved our guilty world, as to give his "only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It was on the wings of charity, that the Son of God flew from heaven to earth, on an errand of mercy to our lost world; it was charity that moved in the minds and hearts of the apostles, and urged them, with the glad tidings of salvation, from country to country. The whole missionary enterprise is founded, not of course on the basis of brotherly kindness, but on that of charity. All those splendid instances that have been presented to us of the exercise of philanthropy, and with which your memories are familiar, are all the operations of this Divine charity. See Howard, leaving the seclusion of a country gentleman, giving up his elegant retreat, and all its luxurious gratifications, pacing to and fro through Europe, plunging into dungeons, battling with pestilence, weighing the fetters of the prisoner, gauging the diseases even of the pest-house, all under the influence of heavenly charity. See Wilberforce, through twenty years of his life, lifting up his unwearied voice, and employing his fascinating eloquence against the biggest outrage that ever trampled on the rights of