wherein thy people ought to look. Ah! Lord God! they that have this procured, that thy holy Word should be wiped and blotted out of the Churches, is it not to be thought that their names are blotted and wiped out of the book of life also ? '1 To conclude. Beware, my beloved brethren, of slighting this blessed book-the word of life and salvation. 'O, with what reverence, and great honour,' said Thomas Becon, ought we to receive, read, or hear the letters of this everlasting King and immortal God, sent for our glory, and for our salvation, seeing that by them not man but God speaketh to us.' Would you wonder if a traveller lost his way when he refused to consult his map, on which alone his path was marked? Would a sailor be surprised if his ship struck on a rock or foundered in a quicksand, when he refused to use his chart and his compass? The Bible is your map, your chart, your compass. See that you consult it: hear and read it with deep attention and reverence. Bring your Bibles to church, and read the appointed portions with the minister; it will help to keep your eyes and your thoughts from wandering from God. Value this blessed book: imitate the spirit of that dying martyr, who having bid a last and solemn farewell to wife and children, reserved his final adieu for the Bible, uttering these remarkable words, Farewell, thou blessed, blessed book of God! Let Christ, the sum and substance of the revelation, be precious to you. Come to Him by faith, as alone "the way, the truth, and the life." Receive 1 Becon's Works, p. 233. Him as made of God, "unto you wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Let your hope be in Christ, in the Word. Let it be a good hope through grace-a hope that maketh not ashamed. Let it be of the same nature as the hope which a dying Hindoo convert once expressed, who in giving an account to her minister of the grounds on which her faith and joy and hope rested, laid her hand on her heart, and with intense earnestness exclaimed, My hope is in Christ here.' Then clasping in her weak and trembling hands her Bible-that precious bookshe said, 'My hope is in Christ here.' And then, with her dying finger pointing up to heaven, she cried, 'My hope is in Christ there. Lastly; let your earnest and unceasing prayers ascend up to the mercy-seat for the illumination of the Holy Ghost. It is the Spirit that quickeneth: you will never be enriched with the unsearchable riches of Christ, until the Spirit of God reveals them to you. That veil of natural blindness must be removed from the heart, for "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned," 1 Cor. ii. 14. Nicodemus with all his wisdom, and Saul of Tarsus, with all his learning and forms and pretence at religion, were in gross darkness, until enlightened from above. Christ must open our understandings by His Spirit, or else his Word will continue a sealed book and a dead letter to us. O! then, how sweet is the assurance that God will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him! He is revealed as the Teacher of the Church; and He will guide you into all truth. We beseech Thee, then, O thou blessed Spirit, Yes, 'Illumine with perpetual light The dulness of our blinded sight.' : 'Thou, celestial light, Shine inward and the mind, through all her powers Amen. SERMON IX. THE CREEDS. ROMANS X. 10. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." THESE words convey to us a description of the true Christian: the Holy Ghost has wrought faith in his soul, and by this he is brought to see the total corruption of his nature, which is the spring of all wickedness, and the unclean fountain from whence all the polluted streams of actual transgression flow. By faith also He shews the sinner the insufficiency of his own righteousness, and his need of a better righteousness to justify him: and by this divine principle of faith he is enabled to apprehend the glorious person of Jesus Christ, and to embrace Him in all his blessed offices, as alone "the way, the truth, and the life; "-as his Prophet to teach him, his Priest to make atonement and intercession for him, and his King to reign in him and over him. And this faith is a matter of the heart, very different from the mere head-knowledge of the formalist, and the outward profession of faith made by the nominal Christian. It is of such a nature as to engage all the powers of the soul: the understanding, the will, and the affections are all drawn by it towards God. It is that faith which appropriates Christ as our Saviour, in the glory of His person, and the infinite fulness, suitableness, and sufficiency of his mediatorial work. It is such a faith as induces the man to venture his all upon Christ, and to resolve that if he do perish, he will perish at the foot of the cross. It works by love: it overcomes the world, and conveys such a sense of Christ's preciousness to the believing soul, as makes it exclaim, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee," Psalm lxxiii. 25. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world," Gal. vi. 14. This is what it is to "believe with the heart unto righteousness; "-it is simply to receive Christ as made of God unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And this faith makes the Christian bold: he confesses his Saviour before men, lets all men know that none saves like Christ-" neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" that He alone is worthy of our adoration and love; that "His blood cleanseth from all sin," His righteousness justifies the most ungodly, and that "in the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death." He can |