ment of a Christian preferable to that of a worldling, the rapture of saints and angels in heaven to the deathless agonies of devils and damned spirits in hell?

II. But look at the obvious DESIGN of the gospel. Is there not in its history and its principles abundant evidence of its having been intended to pour through every bosom a tide of strong and exquisite emotions? If God has taken such pains to reveal his will by patriarchs, and prophets and apostles; if he has given up his Son to the death of the cross for our redemption; if he has sent his Spirit to transform us into his own pure and blessed image; if he has appointed his ministers, his Sabbaths, and all the means of grace to impress his word on our minds with saving efficacy; if he has brought before us the most powerful motives that heaven, earth and hell can suggest, and pressed them upon us in a thousand forms; does he design by all this to produce on our sensibilities no deep, no abiding impression? If he intended no excitement, why provide so much fuel for the flame, and then send coals of fire from heaven to kindle it to an intense, an everlasting blaze?

III. Consider, also, THE TENDENCIES OF DIVINE TRUTH; and say whether the gospel is not adapted to excite strong emotion. Contemplate the character of God, radiant with glory, and endeared to all holy beings by the displays he has made of himself in the works of his creation, providence and grace. Must not these touch the heart? Can we gaze unmoved on his infinite power and wisdom, on his inflexible justice, on his spotless purity, on all the matchless wonders of his love to fallen man? Will that character whose transcendent loveliness waked the psalmist's lyre, whose awful glories overwhelm. ed the prophet's soul, before whose overpowering splendors all the seraphim veil their faces, and bow in transports of admiration and praise-can such a character fail, when properly contemplated, to kindle our hearts into high and delightful emotion?

Look at the atonement with its cluster of wonders; see mankind so ruined, that no created arm could rescue them from endless woe; behold God so loving the world as to give his only begotten Son for their redemption; see the Lamb of God bleeding on the cross to atone for their sins, and restore them to his full and everlasting favor: is there nothing here to melt the heart? If the very name of a Howard has thrilled the bosom even of those who had never been blest by his philanthropy; if when the father of our country died, the nation wept in grateful sorrow; if his companion in arms, on visiting our shores after the lapse of half a century, was hailed by all with every possible

demonstration of respect and gratitude; can we refrain from emotions far deeper, while contemplating the grace of Him who, being "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, yet made himself of no reputation, but took upon him the form of a servant; and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," and consented there to be wounded for our transgressions, to be bruised for our iniquities, and to bear that chastisement by which alone our peace is procured?

In the same way I might glance at all the truths of the gospel; but take only the subject of regeneration, with its kindred and inseparable doctrines. If the Bible represents man as an apostate, as a rebel; as fallen, polluted, ruined; as alienated from God by wicked works, and so utterly dead in sin, that he must be created anew in Christ Jesus, before he can taste the joys of heaven; is it possible for any one to bring such truths as these home to his bosom without being strongly excited? Must they not touch the very main-spring of his soul?

IV. All this excitement, moreover, is required by the INTERESTS at stake. What are those interests? Property or reputation, health or life, the friendship of man, the favor of monarchs, thrones and diadems, all the riches, honors or pleasures that this world can give? No; something more than all these the favor of Him whose smile is heaven, whose frown is hell; an immortality of ever-increasing joy or wo; interests high as the throne of Jehovah, deep as the bottomless pit, lasting as eternity; interests, in comparison with which all that can be crowded into the utmost limits of earth and time, dwindle into nothing.

Would you faintly conceive the value of these interests? Ask not the worldling; he has no arithmetic for such calculations. Ask the sinner when wrung with remorse, and trembling in fear of the wrath to come; ask the recent convert while clasping to his bosom those hopes which he would not exchange for the whole world; ask the advanced Christian while sweetly communing with his heavenly Father, and rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory; ask he man whose spirit hovers on the brink of eternity, just ready to plunge into the pit, or to soar on angel-wings to celestial bliss ask the saints above as they bow before the eternal throne; ask Him who made the soul, and knows its capacities for endless enjoyment or suffering; or Him who came from heaven to the cross for its redemption: then go down to the world of despair, and ask those

whose doom is shadowed forth by the worm that dieth not, and the lake that burneth with quenchless fire: pass down the stream of endless years, and, when myriads after myriads of ages shall have car. ried you far beyond the utmost point that imagination can now reach, pause there, and ask the sufferers in hell, and the glorified in heaven to tell you, if they can, the value of those interests which are suspended on the gospel.

With such interests at stake can we fail to be excited? Go bid the mother feel not while her first born, her only child is expiring in her arms; bid the fond father and husband feel not as he sees his house and whole family wrapt in flames, and hears their wild shrieks for relief; but tell not him whose immortality is at stake, to smother his feelings on a subject that fills all heaven with deep solicitude? Sooner put your foot on the raging volcano, and bid its fiery bosom cease to heave.

V. But reflect on the NECESSITY of strong emotion. Without it the gospel can never accomplish its great design of preparing a fallen race for heaven. Can rebels against God be reclaimed from sin, and transformed into his image, without touching their sensibilities? A sinner regenerated, a Christian sanctified, and united to God, without melting his heart! Can you weld cold iron?

Look at the essential elements of piety. Its seat is in the heart; its very aliment is emotion; and as well might you talk of vision without light, or of fire without heat, as of a Christian without excitement. Examine his spiritual exercises, and see if they are not all exciting. Is there no emotion in that godly sorrow for sin which is unto life? None in that faith which works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world? None in the returning prodigal, none in the humble publican, none in every one of the graces that characterize a new creature in Christ? While attending on the various exercises of devotion, while passing through the conflicts of his spiritual warfare, and going on from one degree of grace to another, till he attains the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus, can the Christian be unmoved? As well might you live without breathing. Piety without emotion is utterly irreconcilable.

VI. Look at some prominent EXAMPLES of true religion. Here we see its essence bodied forth in visible and living forms. And were they all cold as ice? Did piety, in the days of its greatest purity and power, produce no excitement? Did it touch no chord of deep and exquisite sensibility in the bosom of patriarchs, prophets and apostles ? Was the royal penitent unmoved while pouring forth the confessions

and entreaties of the fifty-first Psalm? When smitten to the earth on the plains of Damascus, did Paul feel no emotion? Was there no excitement on the day of Pentecost? None in the bosom of the trembling jailer? None wherever the apostles preached the gospel in demonstration of the Spirit and of power? See the early disciples forsaking father and mother, wife and children, home and country, to go forth, few and feeble, on the mighty enterprise of converting the world to a crucified Savior, braving all the terrors of the dungeon and the stake, setting at defiance the rage of earth and hell leagued against them; and say, can you discover in them no strength of emotion?

If the religion of earth will not satisfy you, examine that of heaven. Inquire of those who have for untold ages bowed before the throne of Jehovah, and rejoiced in his presence, where is fullness of joy. Has there been no excitement in the bosom of those pure and happy spirits? Did the seraphim never kindle into rapture, never burst forth in transports of admiration and praise, never make the lofty arch of heaven ring with their allaluiahs to the Lord God Omnipotent.

If then man was made for excitement; if the gospel was designed, and its truths are adapted to produce the deepest emotion; if the interests at stake so urgently require it; if it is indispensable to the very existence of piety; if the best examples of earth and heaven conspire to illustrate and enforce it; surely we ought to exhibit an ever-burning zeal in matters of religion.

1. Hence we see the propriety of applying divine truth so as to move the whole inner man. Often does it fall on the soul as powerless as moon-beams on a mountain of ice, either because the hearer will not let it come home to himself, or because the preacher does not duly press it on the heart and conscience. He may preach the truth but does not grapple it to the hearer's mind with hooks of steel. He may discharge arrows drawn from the quiver of the Almighty; but he shoots them so much at random as to hit no one, or wraps so much silk about the point as to penetrate no one's heart or conscience. But did Baxter, did Paul, did the Son of God preach thus ?

What conse

But you dread the consequences of excitement. quences? Anxious inquiries after the way of life, the conversion of sinners, the quickening of Christians in their spiritual course? No; but the bad passions that may spring up under such a plain and pointed exhibition of the truth. But who are to blame for such passions? The preaching of Christ and his apostles was followed everywhere with similar results: but would you blame them instead of their infuriated persecutors? Let every sinner be willing to do his duty by

repentance, and faith, and new obedience, and this conflict between the gospel and human depravity would forever cease.

2. Far be it from me to plead for an improper kind, or an excessive degree of excitement in religion. It should ever be holy, constant, well-regulated. It should spring from intelligent and disciplined piety. It should be lighted only at the altar of God, and be kept alive only by the truths of his word, and the influences of his Spirit. It should be constantly increasing to the end of life. The zeal that is hot to-day, and cold to-morrow, that blazes in a crowd, but dies in solitude, that thinks by the fidelity of a month to earn the privilege of a year's apathy and sloth, is worse than useless. Ours should be, not like the flashes of a fire-fly in a summer evening, or the lurid gleams of lightning at midnight, but like the sun pouring down a ceaseless flood of genial light and heat. I have no sympathy with that sort of zeal which wakes up at the commencement of a revival, and coolly calculates on going to sleep again at its close. I plead only for that which will keep the Christian awake through life, and make his soul, even amid a general declension, like the land of Goshen during the darkness that brooded over all the rest of Egypt.

3. Object not the impossibility of sustaining such a spirit of zeal. I know how exhausting are the excitements of guilt; they create in the bosom a whirlwind that convulses the soul, and shatters its tenement of clay. But is it so with the fervors of holiness? Did the zeal of prophets and apostles derange their minds, or waste their energies? Will the excitement of heaven exhaust the glorified spirits there? Such excitement, so far from enfeebling our minds, jading our spirits, or undermining our health, would continually impart fresh vigor to them all.

4. Reflect, then, on the fatal delusion of those who make their religion to consist simply in cool exercises of the intellect. Could you speak with the tongue of men and of angels; had you the gift of prophecy, and understood all the mysteries of religion; had you the highest degree of knowledge, and a faith sufficient to remove mountains; what would you still be without those warm emotions of love to God and man which the gospel requires? Sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal. Hast thou faith? Be it so; but can faith alone save thee? Dost thou believe there is one God? Devils also believe that, and tremble too. Dost thou assent to the entire system of truth revealed in the Bible? So has many a sinner that still went down to his grave impenitent. Hast thou even professed Christ before men ↑ So had they who are represented as pleading before their final Judge,