away by a stream of lava, at the foot a glowing Etna, or a laboring Vesuvius.

4. Will not the pious youth have their farms sold, and pawn their merchandise, that promised them merely temporal blessings, that they may enter upon a mightier enterprise of rescuing from the slavery of sin a world that has ruined itself?

No. VII.

JEREMIAH VIII. 22.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

A PENSIVE and distressed father, that had just left the sick bed of a beloved daughter, and was wandering through the streets in all the dejection of grief, and all the solitude which is not easily thrown off, in the hour of her agony, may easily be supposed to have uttered himself in the language of the text.

And if we may suppose that she had been long subjected to the want of a physician and a nurse, while death must now ensue as a consequence of that neglect, while there was a remedy at hand, and a physician hard by; but there was none at hand to call in that physician, or to apply that balm, by the application of which she might have been restored to health, joy, and life.

One would grieve to hear the solitary moan of such a father, and haste to know if it is altogether too late to call in the kind and timely physician.

It is probably true that Gilead abounded with a balm that, in a great many cases, proved a sovereign remedy to some diseases that prevailed in Jerusalem, called here, and elsewhere, the daughter of Zion. Here, it may be, is asked a question which has relation to the whole human family, and bearing upon the natural disease of the soul, and is equivalent to asking, Are not the means ample and ready for the healing of the plague of sin in the human family? Why then are they not applied, and spiritual health universally recovered?

Of course, the subject divides itself into two heads. I shall be led to speak first of the disease, and then of the remedy.

I. In the first place, I would say of the disease, that it is one of universal application.

There has been no nation found that is not totally depraved. They all practised a gross and God-provoking idolatry. They made their idols as stupid and as devilish as they could, practising as gross a perversion of their Supreme Deity as possible, and then they practised upon man all the outrages that a perverted intellect could contrive. The false religion of the world was a bloody, and adulterous, and cruel, and faithless, and imposing religion, in all its acts.

I now intend the very highest charge that can be brought against the human family, equivalent to that charge brought against us by Him who knows well what is in man-" Thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest."

II. This disease is, of all others, the most contagious. It has been communicated through the wide world, and gone into every little ramification of every kingdom under the whole heaven.

When we find a nation that we have never known before, we find them universally infected with the pillage of sin. Hence, "from the crown of the head, even unto the feet, they are full of wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores."

The prevailing plague has spread through the human family an amount of misery that cannot be easily calculated. It poisons all the human relations, and mars every human compact; and, first of all, man's covenant with his God. The result of this is, that it has filled and loaded him with misery to the full, and all nature แ groans and travails to be delivered from the bondage of corrup tion, and be brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God."

Nor can it be hoped that this result, devoutly to be wished for, will ever be accomplished, till Christ shall come the second time "without sin unto salvation," and "the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.' Here we might expatiate largely upon the miseries of sin, but I pass to the question

"Is there no balm in Gile

III. Why is not the plague healed? ad? is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered ?"

In answering this question, I should choose to say,

1. Sinners are not sensible that they are the subjects of this deplorable disease. They say, We" are whole, and have no need

of a physician;" and "know not that they are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." The first object of a preached gospel is to convince them of this fact. They have no experience that can test this question at all. They have never known what health was, having always been in this same deplorable condition; except that the plague has been gradually becom ing worse and worse, till, at length, it has produced a kind of delirium, that has blunted the sensibility of consciousness, and rendered man blind to the spots of the plague that are upon him.

2. If to any extent they are conscious of their condition, they love the very disease that cleaves to them. How then can it be hoped that they will take the least pains to rid themselves of a pestilence that has as yet given them no pain, and they have known no disgrace that has accrued to them from having the plague upon them.

They are not sent to live in a house by themselves, as the children of Israel used to be when they had the leprosy, or as men are now when affected with the plague.

If men are affected with a disposition to do wickedly, it attaches no disgrace to them, not as it will be in the judgment day, not as it is when men become "ashamed and confounded, and never open their mouths any more, because of their shame, when God becomes pacified towards them for all that they have done."

3. Another reason that men are not healed is, that they do not love the Physician.

He is to them a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness."

It is not to be expected that men will apply to the Savior, however afflicted, till they feel their need of him.

How much pains will parents take to have their children know and love their family physician, lest, when attacked with disease, they should be shy of his approach, and suffer, before they will allow him to come nigh them. But when sinners see the Lord Jesus Christ to be "chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely," they rush to his arms, and are rather glad to be sick, that they may employ such a royal physician.

4. They do not love the price at which they can be healed. It must be with Christ a mere gratuitous healing.

Men must come to him without money, and then it will be without price. The sinner must just give himself into the hands of Christ, to be healed in his own way. Which leads me to say,

5. Sinners do not relish the manner of the application. They are ready, say they, as one who came in old times to the prophet of Israel. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Why may I not wash in them and be clean?" Thus sinners complain of the application.

This deep repentance, and this being healed by faith, destroys all human agency and contrivance, and gives God all the glory.

No. VIII.

ISAIAH II. 22.

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?

MAN can give no good account of himself, nor can his fellows give a good account of him, nor has his Maker any better account to give of him-"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." We do not wonder at God's account of him—“ Thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest."

Man is the most unaccountable creature in all the creation of God-absurd in all his movements

I. He is entirely limited in his powers, "is of yesterday, and knows nothing," and yet is a proud and self-sufficient being, who will not yield to be instructed, of even the Lord of hosts.

II. He is a being of so little might, that he is said to be “crushed before the moth," and yet "he lifteth his mouth against the heavens, and his tongue walketh through the earth." "He rushes upon the thick bosses of Jehovah's buckler," and impudently inquires, "Who is the Lord, that I should serve him?”

III. He is the only accountable creature, and the only careless one. He knows that he must stand before the bar of God, and be judged for all the deeds done here in the body, and yet is heard to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

IV. He is the only reasoning creature, and the yet only one that acts unreasonably. He can look at the face of the sky and know the signs of the times, and yet permits the dread concerns of eternity to close in upon him, unheeded, in the twinkling of an eye. He is crying, Peace, peace, till the moment when sudden destruction comes upon him, as travail upon a woman with child.

V. He is the only probationer for eternity, and yet the only being prodigal of time. He only needs, and has invented pastimes -things to kill time. And yet when he is considered in connection with the things he is constrained to contemplate, time is to him eternity.

VI. He only is capable of looking at the heavens, and has received from them mercies innumerable, "new every morning, and fresh every evening," and yet he is the only being of all the creatures of God who is unthankful. He only is proud of what enslaves and degrades him. He only is vain of what is loaned him, covetous of what is not his own, and what he must quit so soon.

REMARKS.

1. How evidently is man in a state of pain; had his soul retained moral health, he would not have been liable to all this absurdity of moral movement.

2. How lamentably slow is the work of renovation seen to be going on in the believer! When will he ever be what God would

have him to be ?

3. How mad are men to suppose that any thing, less than regeneration, can make man a correct being.

4. How mad is man who trusteth in his own heart. The scriptures pronounce him a fool.

If men may put no confidence in one another, they put none in themselves. Man may be deceived and ruined while he thinks he has a sure guide.