selves the Sons of God; shew forth the praises of him, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;" let it be manifest whose you are, and whom you desire to serve. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another; in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Shew that the gospel you profess is indeed the power of God to deliver you from this present evil world, and to enable you to walk with God in reverence and godly fear.

Do I address any who esteem the preaching of the Cross foolishness-my fellow-sinners, that which you so despise is the wisdom of God-it is that by which alone, you can become acquainted with God-with yourselves-with real happiness-by which alone you can be delivered from the wrath to come. Your present condition is terrific! Is the man who has fallen asleep on the brink of a precipice ready to perish? Is the criminal, upon whom sentence of death has been pronounced, and whose execution is fixed for the morrow, ready to perish? Is the child inhumanly cast out from parental care, and exposed to the inclemency of the elements, ready to perish? You are equally soyea, more-Providence might so order the fall of him who is asleep on the precipice's brink, that he escape with his life-the criminal might, in the interim between the passing of his sentence and the period appointed for its execution, receive a pardon; and the natural ferocity of the brute animals might be converted, by an overruling God, into kindliness of feeling,

and supply the place of a parent to the child. If you die as you live, strangers to the Gospel of Christ, you perish. Hearken, then, my friends, to the testimony of the Lord; "Hear and your soul shall live." This is the command of God, that ye believe upon his Son Jesus Christ--who came into the world to save sinners. "There is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby ye must be saved"—"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," saith his accredited ambassador, and "ye shall be saved." (Acts xvi, 31.)

JUSTIFICATION.

"Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only."

JAMES 11. 24.

It is the recorded and deliberate judgment of one, whose memory ought to be dear to every lover of divine truth, and whose sayings should be held in high estimation by every participator of divine light, that "if the article of justification be lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost with it; and he makes the holding or rejecting of this truth, to be the test of a standing or of a fallen Church. This saying of the indefati

gable and indomitable Luther is true: whose judgment in this matter perfectly accords with the oracles of God and all who have been instructed in the school of Christ will doubtless agree with this Reformer, that there is nothing, connected with divine truth, so necessary evermore to be urged upon the consideration of man, as this doctrine, because of the natural repugnance of the mind to hold it firmly in its legitimate import. The world hates it, and always misrepresents it. The Devil hates it, and labours to overthrow it; and when foiled, too often succeeds in his efforts to corrupt it. To the world's hatred of it on the one part, and to the Devil's corruption of it on the other, are to be ascribed all the systems of false religion which obtain among men. To this are to be attributed the vile calumnies which are either openly heaped upon it or covertly entertained to its prejudice--the outcry raised against it as being subversive of good conduct, and as necessarily setting men at liberty to do as they list; and to this is ascribable the gross and manifestly ungodly delusion, that men may be accepted of God in virtue of their own actions. No wonder that the world hates it, for it is not of the world- it was neither discovered by its wisdom, nor invented by its ingenuity--it discountenances, and condemns the world's carelessness, and indifference, and forgetfulness of God, and stamps as abominable in His sight, what the world highly esteemeth. Bad men hate it, because of its uncompromising holy tendency-self-righteous men hate it, because of its unshackled freeness-and worldly

wise men hate it, because it brings to nought their wisdom, and marks it as "foolishness with God" (Rom. i. 22; 1 Cor. iii. 19)--they despise it because of its unassuming simplicity. No wonder the Devil should impugn it, for it dismembers his kingdom--by the preaching of it his prisoners are emancipated, and` light is poured in upon those, who during the period of his supremacy were "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” (Luke ï. 79.) And will he tamely suffer this? No: but as he has always employed his wiles and craftiness, and the subtleties of a vain philosophy, and "science, falsely so called," (Eph. iv. 14; Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20) with which he infects the minds of his subjects, he will still with all his energy use them, to overthrow, or to eradicate, or to corrupt the precious doctrine of Justification by faith only.

Yet, when we consider the world's hatred of this doctrine, and the opposition it meets on every side, how strangely infatuated and inconsistent, according to human judgment, do men appear, when it is the most precious, the most suitable, the most animating that ever yet was presented to the contemplation of fallen man. That they who are shut out from the Scriptures of God should reject it, is no wonder that a vitiated and deadly system misnamed Christianity should reject it, is no wonder-but that they who profess to enjoy the light of the divine word, and to belong to reformed Churches should deny it, is indeed a wonder; since this truth is the very essence of the word of God: it is the jewel of the reformation".-the point upon