ment, and it was because he could not that he was at the infinite expense of providing an atonement for us. And now is it likely that he will set aside this great, this painful, and expensive work in accommodation to the errors and fancies of a portion of our race; and because they do not see any need of an atonement, and are inclined to reject it, that he will save them in some other way? In what other way can he save them? And if he could, would not the doing of it on any other ground, be the height of indignity to his suffering Son? Would it not be pouring contempt upon his precious blood ?

Besides, if a part of our race were saved and carried to heaven without an atonement, what would be their condition when they arrive there? There would then be two sorts of sinners in heaven, and the celestial palace would resound with two very different anthems of praise. One portion of the redeemed would sing: "All glory to the Saviour! All glory to Him who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood!" While another portion would tune their voices in an opposite strain and say: "All glory to ourselves! All glory to our merits, to our penances, to our performances, by which we were enabled to rise to heaven without the intervention of atoning blood!" Do you believe that there will ever be such jargon in heaven? Do you believe that any of our race will ever go there except through the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ?

The sin of wilfully rejecting the atoning blood of Christ, and substituting something else, is, in my estimation, a dreadful sin. It is a fatally ruinous sin It is, of all others, most emphatically damning to the soul. Until it is found out-in direct contra diction to the language of Scripture-that some other name has been given among men whereby we may be saved besides that of Jesus, we are bound to believe, and it is not uncharitable to believe, that no person who understandingly and willfully rejects the atonement of Christ can ever come within the gates of the Celestial City.

Let me not be misunderstood, however, on this point. I do not say that a person may not be saved in ignorance of the atonement. I hope that some of the heathen are saved. If any of them are truly pious, I feel confident that they are. I hope and believe that children, who die in infancy, are saved. They are saved in ignorance of the atonement, but not in a rejection of it. I can conceive, too, that adult persons, in this Christian land, owing to a want of instruction, or to wrong instruction, may have grown up in such ignorance or misapprehension of the atonement as not to be capable of understandingly rejecting it. All these persons may be saved through Christ without knowing the precise method of their deliverance. Their hearts may be essentially right in the sight of God. They may be prepared, in

the temper of their minds, to close with Christ so soon as they come where he is and understand his claims. But here is a per

son whose eyes are open, and with a full understanding of the doctrine of atonement, he puts it from him. He openly, willingly, heartily rejects it. How is such an one to be forever benefited by the atonement? How is he to be saved by it? For myself, I must confess that I do not see how.

In conclusion, let me invite and entreat all those before me, who have not yet put their trust in Christ to reject now, as delusive and ruinous, every other foundation of hope, and come receive, embrace the Lord Jesus. You see, my friends, your situation sinners, transgressors of God's holy law, and exposed to suffer its penalty forever. God has no wish to destroy you more than Darius had to destroy Daniel; but without an interest in the Lord Jesus Christ how can he save you? How can he do such dishonor to himself and to his law? How can he pour such contempt upon the blood of his son? It was love which prompted the Divine Being to resort to the painful expedient of an atonement-to part with his beloved Son, and give him up to suffering and death; and now shall this matchless love and this infinite sacrifice be of no avail to you? Will you continue to reject it, and tread it under foot? O sinners! why will ye do so? How can you be so ungrateful to God? How can you so trifle with the blood of the Saviour? How can you so put at hazard, yea, utterly cast away and destroy, your own immortal interest? No, flee to the Saviour while you may. Build all your hopes of salvation upon him. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will

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give you a crown of life."

SERMON VI.

BY REV. J. M. II OPPIN,*

NEW-HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.

THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT.

"AT the same time came the disciples to Jesus. saying, Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."-MATT. xviii, 1—3.

THE bitter and evil nature of this controversy of the disciples as to who should be greatest, was heightened by a fact which we learn from the parallel passage in Mark, that the dispute sprang up immediately after the wonderful and celestial scene of the transfiguration; and, in truth, it appears to have grown out of the Lord's choice of three disciples, Peter, Jaunes, and John, to ascend the glorified mountain with him. These favored disciples may have been unduly dazzled by the honor; and the others, moved with secret envy, may have been as unduly depressed. Peter may have urged his claim to the primacy, because long before this the Messiah had singled him out by declaring that his faith was the foundation upon which he would build his church. Andrew may have retorted, that he was the one who, first of them all, had found the Messiah. John may have thought that he had already received marks of peculiar love and confidence from Christ. Philip may have set forth the direct and personal call of the Lord to him, saying: "Follow me."

Jesus did not appear at the time to notice or rebuke them; but when they had all come to their common abode in Capernaum, he asked them what it was they had disputed about by the way? From a feeling of shame they gave him no answer. And then Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst of them; and when he had taken him in his arms, he said to them: "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whoever therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Doubtless the disciples could not yet conceive of a new kingdom, without something of an outward organization, form, and splendor; although in one sense, the kingdom that Christ established on earth was not new, but as old as the Old Testament, as old us man, and heaven. But the difficulty lay deeper than their

• Preached in Yale College Chapel, Dec. 20th, 18C3.

ignorance of the kingdom of God-it lay in their unspiritualized natures, or in the feebleness of the new principle of the heavenly life in them. Their spirit remained as yet in the low, human circle of things, and they saw all things from a human point of view.

But to enter the kingdom of heaven was not by human power or merit; it was by being converted and becoming as a little child. It was not by a man's raising himself to God, but by God's coming down to him, and transforming him into the image of the heavenly. It was a change, not an act, nor, at first, a virtue.

The first great simple truth, therefore, which the words of the text reveal to us-and this whole striking scene of a child set up to preach to angry and contending men-is, that for any man to enter the kingdom of heaven, there must be a deep spiritual change wrought in him. This truth separates the religion of Christ from all human religions, or human theories of Christianity, in which no power outside of man's own nature is thought necessary for goodness and perfection. This change is so deep and radical that it is equivalent to a new life, or a new birth. The spirit of man is so profoundly sinful that nothing will touch it but regeneration. The Saviour, speaking of this change, said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, (or, more literally, from above.) he can not see the kingdom of God." For this there is needed a communication from the great Author of Life. This is God's work alone. It requires a manifestation of the same original creative power that made the universe. As Christ touched the corpse of the widow's son that was being borne through the gate of Nain to its burial, and the crimson life reddened the pale cheek, and the breast heaved, and he rose up and spoke comforting words to his mother and friends; so the compassionate and regenerating touch of the Holy Spirit must be felt, to have this new life enter a dead soul. It is not the creation of a new soul, or of any new spiritual faculty; but it is the ressurrection of the soul, to a new state of being-its awakening to the use of all its powers with a new purpose, and from a new and higher centre of life.

Wherever this higher life has been communicated in times and ways that belong to God's unseen Spirit, and that can not be entirely known to us, it manifests itself in new forins and lineaments. however faint, that contradict the usual course of nature and common spirit of man. It shows its divine parentage. All the expressions of this heavenly life could be comprehended in no symbol with more wonderful beauty, than in the symbol of a little child, who has just received the mysterious gift of life, and is held in the arms of Christ as the sustaining power. They could be comprehended no more fully and profoundly than in the new

childlike spirit. This, above all, is an humble spirit. In the little child, the sons of individual or selfish life, has not yet developed itselt: but he shares his opening life humbly and joyfully with all. Depending on others for life, the child's will lies in the embrace of the parent's will; and yet he feels not the law, but plays and leaps in the charmed circle. How could the heavenly life begin to come forth and show itself in a corrupt and unbelieving world, more unmistakably than in this childlike spirit? It is a new spirit. What would a proud Roman, contemporary with Christ and his disciples, just as this magnificent epoch of the establishment of that empire, which aimed at universal dominion, have said to the setting up of a little child, as symbolizing a kingdom that was to absorb and outlast its own and all other kingdoms? And what would he have thought of the Head-the Founder of that universal and everlasting kingdom-" humbling himself" to take the form, and not only the form, but the spirit, of a little child, lying helpless as human infancy is, in the manger of Bethlehem? He would have treated the thought of "the holy child Jesus" with scorn. But as the King thus humbled himself and became as a little child, so must the subjects of this new kingdom humble themselves, that they may reign with him in this singular realm, were there is no room for the sentiments of ambition or envy; and he that is great must be as he that serveth. Christ's word to each of his disciples is: "Deny thyself, and take up thy cross and follow me." He who follows me, lives, though in an infinitely lower sense, my life over again. He denies and crucifies the old selfish life. The first separate and selfish life is lost, and there is a second and higher life, that is joined with the life of God and the life that runs through his heavenly kingdom. This principle of self-denial-which was carried to its highest point in the cross where the highest life of all was freely denied, poured out, and lost, for the lowest and humblest, in order to manifest the loving will of the Father to the lowest and vilest-forms the vital law from which everything in this new kingdom springs, and is, above all, its entrance law. One must be converted and become as a little child, to enter this kingdom. He must, as it were, turn round and tread back his whole life, its windings of pride and wastes of selfishness, until he comes to his very childhood, fresh from the hand of God, standing face to face with God and eternity, without a wish or will of his own, humbly rejoicing to take from the divine hand the unspeakable gift of life. When one comes to this simplicity of mind-when he feels the evil and real helplessness for good of his own selfish nature and will-then he is fit to receive God's new life and will, and to enter his heavenly kingdom.

This sincere confession of sin, this true humility, this entire self-condemnation in the sight of the pure and all-searching One