he preferred himself to the degraded publican. But the judgment of God was against them; they reasoned-but He had spoken. And this men have been doing ever since, and are doing now. God says, "There is no good in them;" they say there is a little-a very little-but still a little. He says, "Without money and without price;" they say, "We cannot purchase truly, but still we will bring something." He says, "When they had nothing to pay;" they say, "We have not indeed enough to pay our debt, but we will bring a present in our hands." Heathens, more excusable because they had not heard, anxious to find something acceptable to their gods, gave their children to the fire, and their bodies to the crushing of their chariotwheels. Papists, in mingled light and darkness, sought merit in supererogatory works, fantastic self-inflictions, and unnatural fervours. And now, with light increased, but not enough to see by, Protestants look for their goodness in the secrecy of their hearts, in their virtues and well-meanings; or they present God with

their baptism, their churchmanship, or their alms-deeds. And it is still reason and experience that are made to oppose themselves to the acceptance of the truth.

It is deeply interesting, though very painful, to meet an amiable and upright man of the world upon this ground. He knows that he feels something he is accustomed to call virtue, and that he loves something he is accustomed to call goodness. He feels incapable of the vices he sees committed round him. He compares his own upright, honourable, and it may be generous purposes, with the sordid viciousness of other men. There is a warmth of indignation in his bosom against injustice and oppression, which he takes for a hatred of iniquity; whilst his admiration of every generous and noble action seems as if it could be nothing else than an innate love of holiness. Comparing themselves by themselves, and measuring themselves among themselves, it is evident that all are not alike; the world has its good men and its bad ones, its honourable and

dishonourable, its base and its noble: subjects of the prince of this world notwithstanding. It is in vain that God has included all men under sin, and said there is no difference; the upright man of the world sees and feels there is a difference, and he thanks God in his heart he is not like other men. He appeals to reason and to fact. Now if it were true that reason and experience are opposed to the word of God, that word must be true notwithstanding. But in fact, though his word may contain many things too great to be compassed by the former, and too deep to be sounded by the latter, there can be no real inconsistency between them. We call the ocean bottomless because our lines are not long enough to fathom it; we call the stars of heaven numberless because we cannot count them. But in these things we are too wise to believe our senses or be deceived by our incapacity. The light of science has undeceived us, while the evidence of our senses remains the same. So does the light of divine grace undeceive us with respect to the state of our hearts

before God, though the shades and differences of human character remain still visible.

One principal cause of difficulty in the reception of this truth is, that men think of sin as a succession of separate acts, rather than as a principle of action of holiness as the adopting of certain maxims, rather than a state of being. A man may deal fairly to-day, and fraudulently to-morrow; nay, he may, at the same moment, give the boon of charity with one hand, and grasp the wages of iniquity with the other; but he cannot be at the same time righteous and unrighteous: he cannot be at once an honest and a dishonest man. We do not say that a natural man never does right, never acts properly, nor feels justly; but we say of his actions, the best and the worst, that they flow from a principle of earthliness, self-interest, and expediency, not from love of God, or love of holiness; they flow from the same principle that would have induced him, had it seemed desirable, and expedient, or to his interest, to do the exact contrary. In the words of our

church we say of such good actions, "For that they are not done, as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not, but they have the nature of sin." And if the fairest of the fruit be sin, shall we venture to say there is goodness in the root? Men love certain demonstrations of goodness which are well accepted in society, and they love some sins for the same reason: this is not to love goodness. They love some features of a holy character that commend themselves to their natural taste, but they hate others that are equally beautiful in the sight of God; this is not to love holiness. The natural man does not love either. When he beheld the only perfect personification of them in characters of humanity, there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him; and when they see the nearest assimilation to it that is to be found among men, they do not like it still.

" If

ye

were of the world," our Saviour says, "the world would love its own:" not for their goodness

"but because I have chosen you out of the