the complete demonstration of the matter. The everlasting God-the Lord-the Creator of the ends of the earth-in whose sight the heavens are unclean, hath proclaimed himself of purer eyes than to behold evil. He will by no means clear the guilty; he will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him; that is, of all sinners. The exhibition which he so frequently offers of this most illustrious attribute, is more than once contrasted with human impurity. "Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts,"* is the exclamation of one who was favoured with a vision of God, enthroned in the temple, and heard the loud shout of Holy! Holy! Holy! from the voices of the seraphim resounding through that sacred edifice. "Mine eye seeth thee," says Job, "Wherefore I abhor myself." Wonder not, brethren, to hear such expressions from the lips of just men, for thus it is written,

There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not." "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." Thus while Revelation teaches the sanctity of God, it publishes our impurity; while it asserts the divine justice, it exposes our guilt; while it proclaims, in language that cannot be misunderstood, the existence and extent of moral evil or spiritual death, it precludes the vain hope of cancelling past offences by any supposable subsequent obedience. "Wherewithal then shall we come before the Lord, and bow ourselves before the high God?" Canst thou, majesty of heaven, canst thou be just, and yet cancel the crimes which invite thy vengeance? Canst thou be just and yet reverse the sentence which dooms the ungodly to the horrors of eternal death? Momentous questions! but let us hear their anIsaiah, vi. 5. tJob, xlii. 5, 6. Eccl. vii. 20. 1 John, i. 8. $1 John, i. 10.

swers. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life."* When destruction and the terrors of hell encompassed us; when the ministering spirits that not long before had rejoiced in unison with the stars of the morning, to witness the creation of man, now hung in silent sorrow over the spectacle of his ruin; when the exterminating angel, prepared to execute the behest, "the soul that sinneth, it shall die;" in that moment a divine arm saved us. "Lo! I come," said the eternal Son of God, "in the volume of the decrees it is written of me, I come to do thy will, O God! Angel of death, who bearest the sword of my Father's justice, stay now thine hand, I come to redeem the world." In the fulness of time this august person was manifest in the flesh, and entered upon a life, every succeeding stage of which was marked with sufferings and sorrows. He was a wanderer in a world of his own creation; exposed to the damps of heaven, to hunger, and to poverty. He endured temptation, persecution, and the keenest wounds 、 which malevolence could inflict. He was forsaken by the friends of his bosom. He was despised and rejected by those whom he came to save. And at length when the measure of human iniquity was completed, in the murder of this most innocent and holy being, he gave his soul an offering for sin, and died for the ungodly. Sublime condescension! Exalted humiliation! "Heaven wept, that man might smile! Heaven bled, that man might never die." But, praised be God, the cross and the tomb, although the most melancholy, are not the concluding circumstances which signalize the mediatorial function of our Redeemer. A nobler destiny awaited him. The splendour of a celestial triumph was in reserve for him. Avert your eyes, and behold him ascending the throne of his glory. If he died for our sins, he rose again for our justification, and liveth forever in a better world, to intercede for those who rejected him. "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his John, iii. 16.

Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Here then, let conscience find repose. The tear which trembles in the eye of penitence, and the sigh which agitates her bosom, thou, O! merciful Jesus, wilt not forget, when from the golden altar, before the throne, thou offerest the pure incense of the prayers of thy redeemed!

"He that bath the Son, hath life," because his nature is renewed.

"Christ," we are told, "bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness." And, "that he might purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." It became him, therefore, to employ means adequate to the end. We who' receive the whole record of God, must believe that, upon the first defection of our race, the principle of spiritual life was extinguished, and man became "dead in trespasses and sins.” From a metaphor so striking as that of death and so generally employed by the sacred writers in describing the human character in its fallen state, we learn that the reformation of the heart is as much beyond our natural ability, as the reanimation of the body. And may we not appeal to fact in illustration of this truth? Let history point to the happy moment, before the incarnation of Jesus, when the world, or any part of it, influenced by the writings and conferences of sages, persuaded by the charms of amiable example, or urged by the terrors of superstition, abjured its follies and its crimes: when early rectitude resumed its place: when piety, justice, purity, revived to be venerated and practised. Let her contradict the remark so often and so unanswerably made, that the annals of mankind are the annals of crime; and that every page of them teems with abominations. If, pursuing our illustration, we resort to the grand theatre of human action, the world around us, what do we see? We see multitudes even within the pale of the church and favoured with the external privileges of our re

Rom. v. 10. 1 Peter, ii. 24. Titus, ii. 14.

ligion, practising vices which excite the scorn of the uninstructed savage. We see multitudes wilfully closing their eyes against the light which encircles them, and abandoning the sublime truths of our holy faith for the doting fables of the infidel and the sophist.

Shall we seek for amendment from the sentiments of our own hearts? Alas! our own hearts condemn us. We feel that it is impossible for us without superiour aid, to sever the links of that eternal chain of darkness with which the corruption of nature hath bound us. But I will not enlarge.

It is enough that the word of God be accredited. There every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is described as being only evil, and that continually, and this very heart compared to stone. There, we are depicted as being insufficient of ourselves to think any good thing as of ourselves. The carnal mind," says an Apostle, "is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then," and it is an inference of his own, "they that are in the flesh cannot please God."* So perverse is fallen human nature, that even the illustrious servant of Christ is necessitated to lament that the commandment which was ordained to life he found to be unto death; and the whole seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans furnishes a most instructive comment on this part of our subject. So far, then, from being capacitated, of ourselves, to attain the heights of virtue, as some have dreamed, the least attempt to amend our hearts and lives exceeds our ability: and to suppose otherwise is to suppose contrary to the truth of history, experience, and holy writ. Philosophy mistakes her province when she assumes the task of regenerating the depraved heart. As easily might she change the black hue of Ethiopia, or deprive the Leopard of his spots. Revelation itself, I would speak it with reverence, revelation itself, unassisted by the internal witness of a sanctified heart, is incompetent to the office. It is the prerogative of an all-wise

Rom. viii. 7. 8.

and all-merciful God to operate a change of such magnitude. The same divine person who saves us from guilt, sayes us also from pollution. From the habitation of his holiness, where he reigns exalted far above all principality and power and might and dominion, he dispenses to his church the spirit of sanctification. "For we are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which he hath before ordained that we should walk in them."* It is the office of faith to purify the heart; and faith is one of the graces of that Eternal Spirit who hath descended into the abodes of mortality to deliver those who were subject to bondage," and to quicken those who were "dead in trespasses and sins."

"He that hath the Son hath life;" because he obtains a happy resurrection to heaven and immortality.

Never does death wear a form so terrific, as when he approaches to sever the mysterious tie which connects the soul with the body. When we consider this awful event in all its circumstances, and especially in the view which it presents of the ruins of man, we cannot wonder that the most resolute mind loses its self possession. To close the eye in darkness, forgetting and forgotten-to behold no more the light of heaven or the innumerable glories of creation-to break those bonds which unite heart with heart-to hear the last accents and receive the last embrace of affection-to descend into the grave-to make up our abode with corruption and claim kindred with the worm-to suffer the dissolution of the body, while the immortal spirit launches upon a trackless ocean and penetrates into unknown regions-this it is which affects all men-and this it is to die. But are the fluctuations of suspense all that remains to those who have devoted their lives to heaven? Does the sod that conceals their mouldering reliques terminate the prospect which beguiled their pilgrimage through life? Shall the sun of righteousness, whose beams once conveyed to all their faculties light, *Eph. ii. 10.