thus of the goodness of God, you will as naturally communicate good as the sun communicates his beams.

Our doctrine of unconscious and undesigning influence shows how it is, also, that the preaching of Christ is often so unfruitful, and especially in times of spiritual coldness. It is not because truth ceases to be truth, nor, of necessity, because it is preached in a less vivid manner, but because there are so many influences, preaching against the preacher. He is one, the people are many; his attempt to convince and persuade is a voluntary influence; their lives, on the other hand, and especially the lives of those who profess what is better, are so many unconscious influences, ever streaming forth upon the people, and back and forth between each other. He preaches the truth, and they, with one consent, are preaching the truth down; and how can he prevail against so many, and by a kind of influence so unequal? When the people of God are glowing with spiritual devotion to Him, and love to men, the case is different; then they are all preaching with the preacher, and making an atmosphere of warmth for his words to fall in; great is the company of them that publish the truth, and proportionally great its power. Shall I say more? Have you not already felt, my brethren, the application to which I would bring you? We do not exonerate ourselves; we do not claim to be nearer to God or holier than you; but ah! you know not how easy it is to make a winter about us, or how cold it feels! Our endeavor is to preach the truth of Christ and his cross as clearly and as forcibly as we can. Sometimes it has a visible effect, and we are filled with joy; sometimes it has no effect, and then we struggle on, as we must, but under great oppression. Have we none among you that preach against us in your lives? If

we show you the light of God's truth, does it never fall on banks of ice; which if the light shines through, the crystal masses are yet as cold as before? We do not accuse you; that we leave to God, and to those who may rise up in the last day to testify against you. If they shall come out of your own families; if they are the children that wear your names, the husband or wife of your affections; if they declare that you, by your example, kept them away from Christ's truth and mercy, we may have accusations to meet of our own and we leave you to acquit yourselves as best you may. I only warn you, here, of the guilt which our Lord Jesus Christ will impute to them that hinder his gospel.

18

XI.

OBLIGATION A PRIVILEGE.

PSALMS cxix. 54.-"Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

WHEN the eastern traveler takes shelter from the scorching heat of noon, or halts for the night, in some inn or caravansary, which is, for the time, the house of his pilgrimage, he takes the sackbut or the lyre and sooths his rest with a song-a song it may be of war, romance, or love. But the poet of Israel finds his theme, we perceive, in the statutes of Jehovah-Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. These have been my pastime, with these I have refreshed my resting hours by the way, and cheered myself onward through the wearisome journey and across the scorching deserts of life. Not songs of old tradition, not ballads of war, or wine, or love, have supported me, but I have sung of God's commandments, and these have been the solace of my weary hours, the comfort of my rest. This 119th Psalm, which is, in every verse, an ode or hymn in praise of God's law,-sufficiently illustrates his meaning.

Multitudes of men, it is evident as it need be, have a very different conception of this matter. Divine law, divine obligation, responsibility in any form, authority under any conditions, they feel to be a real annoyance to life. They want their own will and way. Why must they be hampered by these constant restrictions? Why

must they be shortened in their pleasures, crippled in their ambition, held back from all their strongest impulses; just those by which they might otherwise show their vigor and make a brave and manly figure of their life. But instead of being allowed any such generous freedom, they are tethered, they fancy, tamed, subjected to continual scruples of fear and twinges of conviction, confused, weakened, let down in their confidence, and all the best comfort of their life is taken away. Could they only be rid of this annoyance, life would be a comparatively easy and fair experience.

In this controversy you have taken up with the Psalmist, he is very plainly right, and you as plainly wrong; as I shall now undertake to show, and as you, considering that God's law is upon you and can by no means be escaped, ought most gladly to hear and discover. His doctrine, removing the poetry of the form, is this,—

That obligation to God is our privilege.

Some of you will fancy, it may be, at the outset, that the pilgrimage he speaks of is made by the statutes; that the restrictions of obligations are so hard and close, as to cut off, in fact, all the true pleasures of life, and reduce it to a pilgrimage in its dryness. But this pilgrimage is made by no sense of restriction. Every man, even the most licentious and reckless is a pilgrim; the atheist is a pilgrim; such are only a more unhappy class of pilgrims, a reluctant class who are driven across the deserts, cheerfully traversed by others, and by the fountains where others quench their thirst. There is a perfect harmony between obligation to God and all the sources of pleasure and happiness

God has provided, so that there is no real collision between the statutes over us and the conditions round us. It is only false pleasures that are denied us, those that would brutalize the mind, or mar the health of the body, or somehow violate the happiness of fellow beings round us. Consider the long run of life and take in all the interests of it, and you will find that what we call obligation to God, not only does not infringe upon your pleasures, but actually commands you on, to the greatest and highest enjoyments of which you are capable.

There is another objection or false impression that needs to be noticed; viz., that the very enforcements of penalty and terror added to God's law, to compel an acceptance of it or obedience to it, are a kind of concession that it is not a privilege, but a restriction or severity rather, which can not otherwise be carried. Is it then a fair inference, that human laws are severe and hard restrictions, and no true privilege, or blessing, because they are duly enforced by additions of penalty? It is only to malefactors and felons that they are so; and for these only, considered as being enforced by terrors, they are made. They are restrictions to the lawless and disobedient, never to the good. On the contrary, a right minded, loyal people, will value their laws and cherish them as the safeguard even of their liberty. Just so also, the righteous man will have God's statutes for his songs, in all the course of his pilgrimage.

Dismissing now these common impressions, let us go on to inquire a little more definitely, how it would be with us, if we existed under no terms of obligation; for if we are to settle it fairly, whether obligation is a privilege or not, this manifestly is the mode in which the question should be stated. The true alternative between obligation and no