energy, a copiousness, a fulness of detail, proportioned to its acknowledged importance. You will not be silent on the precepts, from an apprehension of infringing on the freedom of the gospel, nor sink the character of the legislator in that of the Saviour of the church. A morality, more elevated and pure than is to be met with in the pages of Seneca or Epictetus, will breathe through your sermons, founded on a basis which every understanding can comprehend, and enforced by sanctions which nothing but the utmost stupidity can despise a morality of which the love of God, and a devoted attachment to the Redeemer, are the plastic soul, which, pervading every limb and expressing itself in every lineament of the new creature, gives it a beauty all its own. As it is the genuine fruit of just and affecting views of divine truth, you will never sever it from its parent stock, nor indulge the fruitless hope of leading men to holiness, without strongly imbuing them with the spirit of the gospel. Truth and holiness are, in the christian system, so intimately allied, that the warm and faithful inculcation of the one, lays the only foundation for the other. For the illustration of particular branches of morals, we may consult pagan writers on ethics, with advantage; but in search of principles, it is at our peril that we desert the school of Christ; since "we are complete in him," and all the moral excellence to which we can aspire is but christianity embodied; or, if we may be allowed to change the figure, the impress

of the gospel upon the heart. The perfection of the christian system, considered as the instrument of renovating the human mind, is the second consideration.

3. The third consideration to which I would direct your attention, is, that of its being the dispensation of the Spirit. To this the apostle immediately refers in the context, where he is contrasting the christian with the Jewish institute. Who hath also made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death written and engraven in stones was glorious, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be more glorious? From this circumstance he infers the superior dignity of the christian ministry. The miraculous gifts, intended for a sign to unbelievers, and to aid the gospel, during its first struggle with the powers of pagan darkness, have long since ceased with the exigency that called them forth; but the renewing and sanctifying agency of the Spirit remains, and will continue to the end of time; the express declaration of our Saviour not admitting a doubt of its perpetuity. I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. To the world, who, in their unrenewed state, are unsusceptible of his

sanctifying impress, he is promised, in the preparatory form of a spirit of conviction; to believers, he is promised as an indwelling principle, an everpresent Deity, who consecrates the hearts of the faithful to be his perpetual abode. Hence the ministers of Christ are not dependent for success on the force of moral suasion; not merely the teachers of an external religion, including truths the most momentous, and duties of the highest obligation; they are also the instruments through whom a supernatural agency is exerted. And hence, in the conversion of souls, we are not to compare the difficulties to be surmounted, with the feeble resources of human power, but with his, with whom nothing is impossible. To this the inspired historian every where directs our attention, as alone sufficient to account for the signal success which crowned the labours of the first preachers. If a great multitude at Antioch turned to the Lord, it was because the hand of the Lord was with them; if Lydia believed, in consequence of giving attention to the things that were spoken, it was because the Lord opened her heart ; if Paul planted and Apollos watered with success, it was the Lord who gave the increase; and highly as they were endowed, and though invested with such extensive authority, they did not presume to count upon any. thing from themselves; their sufficiency was of God. As the possibility of such an influence can be doubted by none who believe in a Deity, so the peculiar consolation derived

from the doctrine that asserts it, seems to be this, that it renders what was merely possible, certain; what was before vague and undetermined, fixed, by reducing the interposition of the Almighty, in the concerns of salvation, to a stated method and a settled law. The communication of the Spirit, to render the gospel efficacious, becomes a standing ordinance of heaven, and a full security for its final triumph over every opposing force. My word, said the Lord by the prophet, shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish the thing whereunto I sent it. At the same time, connected as it is by the very tenour of the promise, with the publication of an external revelation, and professing to set its seal only to the testimony of Jesus, it precludes, as far as possible, every enthusiastic pretension, by leaving the appeal to scripture as full and uncontrolled as if no such agency were supposed. It is strange that any should be found to deny a doctrine so consolatory, under the pretence of its derogating from the sufficiency of Revelation, when it not only ascribes to it all the efficacy that can belong to an instrument, or external means, but confers the highest honour upon it, by marking it out as the only fountain of instruction to which the agency of the Deity is inseparably attached. The idea of his immediate interposition must necessarily increase our veneration for whatever is connected with it; and let it ever be remembered, that the internal illumination of the Spirit is merely intended to qualify the mind for distinctly

perceiving, and cordially embracing those objects, and no other, which are exhibited in the written word. To dispel prejudice, to excite a disposition for inquiry, and to infuse that love of the truth, without which we can neither be transformed by its power nor bow to its dictates, is the grand scope of spiritual agency; and how this should derogate from the dignity of the truth itself, it is not easy to conceive. The inseparable alliance between the Spirit and the Word, secures the harmony of the divine dispensations; and since that spirit of truth can never contradict himself, whatever impulse he may give, whatever disposition he may communicate, it involves no irreverence towards that divine agent to compare his operations with that standing revelation, which, equally claiming him for its author, he has expressly appointed for the trial of the spirits.

Let me earnestly entreat you, by keeping close to the fountain of grace, to secure a large measure of its influence. In your private studies, and in your public performances, remember your absolute dependence on superior aid; let your conviction of this dependence become so deep and practical as to prevent your attempting any thing in your own strength, after the example of St. Paul, who, when he had occasion to advert to his labours in the gospel, checks himself by adding, with ineffable modesty, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. From that vivid perception of truth, that full assurance of faith, which is its inseparable