gross for any but the theoretical religionist. The text ascribes it to a social effect: For,

II. It does not more certainly purify the heart, than it worketh by love.

Love is the master-principle of all good society. It is the holy bond which connects man with man, and angel with angel, and angels with men, and all with God. It is itself an emanation from his own purity. For God is love: and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him. Consequently, the new man, whom regenerating grace creates in elected sinners, and whose activities are maintained by faith, must be governed by love. Its first and most natural exercise is toward that God who hath loved them with an everlasting love, and therefore with loving-kindness hath drawn them. It is the apprehension by faith of Jehovah's love to them in Christ, anticipating them with mercy, forgiving them all trespasses, leading them with covenant-favor, which softens their obduracy, melts them into tenderness, and excites the gracious reaction of love toward their reconciled Father. We love him, says an apostle who had drunk deeply into the spirit of his Master, we love him, because he first loved us.

As an enemy to God is, by the very nature of his temper, an enemy to himself and to all other creatures, so one in whose heart the love

of God is shed abroad by the Holy Ghost, not only consults his own true happiness, but is led to consult the happiness of others. Charity, saith the Apostle Paul, suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things; endureth all things. The Scriptures, indeed, mark love to the brethren as the great practical proof of our Christianity. Nothing can be more peremptory than the language of the beloved disciple-If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a LIAR: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? On this point, however, there will be little dispute. Men are instinctively led to measure, by their social effects, all pretensions of love to God. The question before us, and which the scriptural decision will be far from uniting the mass of suffrage, is, how faith works by love?

The apostle asserts, that the faith of a Christian, instead of being a merely speculative assent to the abstract truth of the gospel, is an active moral principle, which cannot have its just course without embodying itself in deeds

of goodness. The reasons are many and manifest--By faith in Christ Jesus we are justified before God, our natural enmity against him is slain, and his love finds access to our hearts. By faith we embrace the exceeding great and precious promises, and, in embracing them, are made partakers of the divine nature; so that we are filled with all the fullness of God; and out of the abundance of the heart, not only does the mouth speak, but the man act; by faith we converse with our Lord Jesus Christ; are conformed to him; follow him in the regeneration; and learn to imitate that great example which he left us when he went about doing good. By faith we obtain the promised Spirit who sanctifies our powers both of mind and body, so that we yield our members instruments of righteousness unto God. By faith in Christ's blood, which redeems us from the curse of the law, we are also liberated from the vassalage of sin : for the strength of sin is the law; and, receiving the law as fulfilled and satisfied by his righteousness, come under its obligation in his covenant, and are enabled to keep it by his grace. Now the fulfilling of the law is love; love and kindness to God and our neighbor, in all our social relations: It is, therefore, impossible that faith should not work by love.

All the directions of the book of God for

the practice of the moral virtues, consider them as the evolution of the principle of love residing in a heart which has been purified by faith. Our Lord's sermon on the mount, by the perversion of which many have seduced themselves and others into a lying confidence in their own fancied merits, was preached, not to the promiscuous multitude, but to his disciples, who professed faith in his name. And the scriptures of the Apostles, especially the Apostle of the Gentiles, follow the same order. They address their instructions to the church of God-to the saints-to such as have obtained like precious faith with themselves. Not a moral precept escapes from their pen, till they have displayed the riches of redeeming love. But when, like wise master-builders, they have laid a broad and stable foundation in the doctrines of faith, they rear without delay the fair fabric of practical holiness. It is after they have conducted their pupils to the holiest of all, through the new and living way which Jesus hath opened, that you hear their exhorting voice, Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, aud covetousness, which is idolatry. Put off also all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to ano

ther, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision; barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, (for this very reason that ye are his elect,) holy and beloved, put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things, above bowels of mercies, above kindness, above humbleness of mind, above meekness, above long-suffering, above forbearance, above forgiveness, above all these things, put on CHARITY, which is the bond of perfectness. If the Apostles, then, understood their own doctrine; or rather, if the Spirit by whom they spake knows what is in man, we are not to look for real love, i. e. for true morality, from any who are not the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And, on the contrary, this faith is the most prolific source of good actions; because it purges the fountain of all action, and sends forth its vigorous and healthful streams, purifying the heart, and working by love.

I should be unfaithful, my brethren, to truth