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peace. We have access," says he, " by faith unto this grace wherein we stand," It was not faith that made the sea of God's wrath grow calm when man in his rebellion expected to be swallowed up in the great deep; it was not this faith that produced the wonder of "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory;' but it is this that knits the soul into union with the blessed Jesus; it is this that makes God in Christ present to the heart; for it actually "sees him that is invisible." What do you imagine was the charm that soothed Paul in a dungeon? His eye saw nothing of the misery and desolation that would have sunk a worldly mind; it was in heaven, surveying the glorious freedom of the redeemed saints; it was " looking unto Jesus." What do you suppose gave Stephen that peace and composure, that he expressed in the agonies of death? hear it out of his own mouth: "Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." He saw his salvation, and he heeded nothing beyond it. His eyes, instead of regarding those who were gnashing on him with their teeth, were calmly looking unto Jesus." And what is it, think ye, that sustains the disciple of our own day, the solitary one perhaps of an entire family, who is applying his heart

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to the blessed truth, of which the rest are ignorant? Why is it that the bitter words of father and mother, and brothers and sisters, have not the power to crush his spirit? He is but a lamb, a weakling of the flock, and yet, in spite of frowns and entreaties, he goes boldly to the throne of grace. Oh! ask his soul, and he will tell you the secret. The unkindness of those about him would be too much for endurance, but that he has a wiser and a kinder Father cheering him in the language of love, and saying, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." He has a friend that "sticketh to him closer than a brother;" and if the ties of nature are all disjointed, he is not on that account cast down, he has fled away far, far beyond them, he is looking unto Jesus."

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Am I speaking to some of you, my brethren, who have only bodily eyes, and so cannot discern spiritually? Am I opening my mouth. in parables? Alas! if these things are mysterious upon earth, if you will not even view them now through a glass darkly, they will not be better comprehended in eternity. If

you had ever wept over the wanderings of the heart, and felt yourself to be a stubborn child; if the rod of a Father had ever smitten you, and a Saviour's hand had bound up the bleeding wound, then you would have known what it was to look unto Jesus. You will have

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run, my friends, a most unprofitable course, if you can give no other account of it, than that you have done your best. The best you can do without Jesus, is fit only for the dunghill. You may be intellectually wise and prudent among your fellows; you may be rich, and of good reputation; "but the race is not to the swift, neither is the battle to the strong." In the midst of all this parade of knowledge, where is Jesus as a strengthener, a purifier, an advocate, a king? You have stood alone, he has not been confessed in his offices, nor sought after in his promises; "he is despised and rejected of men." But we are not all of them that draw back unto perdition. I trust among these worshippers there is a goodly number who will enter "into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." You are men whose characters, and views, and joys are mistaken by the world, whose God they know not, whose ways they love not, and whose Saviour has not been revealed to them. Give them a new year's token of brotherly feeling, make an effort to undeceive their foolish hearts, strive to bring them with you to this Christian race, and if they ask you of its difficulties and trials, tell them that they are far less than those which the three great masters of mankind, the world, the flesh, and the devil, entail upon the slaves that serve them, and let this truth be added to the

other, that the more diligently they run, the less will they view it as a labour;—that rugged places will become smooth, and mountains sink into valleys, that at length they will come off more than conquerors by the simple act of "looking unto Jesus."

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SERMON V.

CHRIST THE CORRECTOR OF HIS CHURCH.

JEREMIAH Xii. 7.

Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place, where I had hid it, and behold the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing."

THE Old Testament is full of the most striking similitudes chosen by God himself, to describe the different states of those who are ripening either for a blessing or a curse; and the parables of the New Testament are to the same effect. They are all given to us with the merciful purpose of bringing us acquainted with the true temper of the heart, and of forming, as it were, new touchstones for the trial of our faith. God has many methods for awakening his sleeping people; at one time it is done by the threatenings of the law, which, like the blast of a trumpet, announces that the enemy is at hand;

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