ry in your moral deportment toward your fellow-creatures-participate in all the outward privileges of the Christian church-be accounted a believer of high degree before mortal tribunals, and yet the renewing spirit of God have had nothing to do with you. The world, says the beloved John, knoweth us not. Is not the Christian character a riddle and a mystery, containing something which you cannot unravel? When he speaks of the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing the conscience from dead works to serve the living God-of that peace which passeth all understanding of setting his affections on things above-of looking for the blessed hope, the appearing of the great God our Savior-does he not speak a foreign language? Are you not sensible there is something here which you do not understand? which has no counterpart in your soul? It is dreadfully ominous. There is every ground to fear that when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, you may prove destitute of the only thing which can entitle or qualify you to enter his heavenly kingdom-all your knowledge, gifts, profession, and privileges notwithstanding. And is it so indeed? Must we admit the overwhelming thought, that many whom we knew in the flesh, whom we loved for their amiable properties, whom we hailed as brethren in the common salvation, must at last sink down before our faces in bottomless perdition? Shall any pass from their seats in this sanctuary into that place of despair? O what a sweet relief to the foreboding heart, that still there is hope! It has not yet come to the dreadful extremity. O then, what shall we do to be saved? Who utters that agonizing cry? The way is but one, and it is short. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou SHALT be saved. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. There is no peradventure in the case. Thou SHALT be saved? O had I but that precious faith, this unbelief would not weigh me down, like a mill-stone of death. Go to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who has it to give, and who gives it freely. Go to him with your stony heart, with your death in trespasses and sins, and plead with him for the quickening Spirit. Never quit him till you get an answer of peace--throw yourself at his feet, and lie there where sinner never yet perished, till he be gracious unto you. He hath said, Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out. A word to the children of God, and I have done. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. Born of his Spirit, and introduced into his kingdom, What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness? Exemplify the beauties, breathe the tempers, speak the lan guage, cherish the loftiness, of the kingdom. It is not for those who are of such high descent and such infinite expectations, to stoop to those toys which the children of earth mistake for riches, nor to defile themselves with the pollutions which they miscall pleasures. Keep unspotted that white robe in which you were clothed on the day of your new birth, the day of your espousals, and of the gladness of your heart. Know ye that the very angels of God can tell you, as the heirs of the kingdom, only by your walking as Christ also walked? It is the light of the divine image shining out in its brightness that renders your names visible in the catalogue of God's elect. Ponder much your obligations to the grace of the Lord Jesus, who loved you with an everlasting love-so loved you as to give himself an offering for you. The bitterness of Gethsemane and the anguish of Calvary, the rage of hell and the curse of God, could not shake his loving purpose, nor make him flinch from his resolution to save you. From the sentence of God's righteous law and the danger of eternal death-from the filth and power of your depravity -the service, the communion, and the recompense of the devil-he hath called you to a rank above the angels, and to all the blessedness of the kingdom of God. Oh! We will remember thy love more than wine. To him that loved us, |
