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sumption to claim a particular interposition in his favour, God should be pleased to interrupt the order of his providence and give a sensible demonstration of the indispensable necessity of Gospel obedience. Suppose that this sacred

temple were to be chosen by the Almighty as the seat of his immediate presence-that he should appear in all the terrors of his power upon the altar, and there utter in a voice of thunder from the clouds of his glory and majesty, those awful and affecting words of Scripture, "Jerusalem is in adversity with her children. If ye repent not, ye shall all likewise perish." Such a scene we may think would leave an impression upon the brain, that we should carry with us through age unto the grave. All the fascinations of vice, we may imagine, and all the vanities of the world would vanish and fade away before the remembrance of its wonders; and we should all become, what we are called upon to be, devoted to the service of man and our Maker; and we should all study to reap all the benefits by fulfilling all the conditions of the Gospel scheme of salvation. Oh, my brethren, I beseech you not to form so flattering a judgment. Answer not even for your own hearts, for the heart of man is deceitful above all things; but turn to the Bible (I speak as to believers) and there learn the wisdom by reading the answer of experience. Such a scene has been

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represented before human eyes and upon the theatre of the world. God did once virtually appear in the splendor of his greatness. He spake, from the Shechinah of his glory, to the Israelites upon Mount Sinai, and they felt all that men could and must feel upon such an occasion. They were humbled by the greatness of their fear. They trembled before the Lord their God. They fell down before him, and besought him that he would speak to them no more in his might, but only through the mouth of his prophet Moses, to whose words they vowed an entire and an everlasting obedience. Yet how soon they forgot their promises-how soon the traces of the scene faded from their imagination, their murmurings, and sufferings, their crimes and punishments in the wilderness too sufficiently and sadly declare. It is a truth, that the proofs derived from the senses are never of so lasting a nature as those which apply to the understanding; for whilst the former dwindle away through forgetfulness, the latter acquire new force from time and examination. And such are the proofs of the truth and divinity of our religion, which leave us, therefore, no fair excuse for disobedience to its precepts. The things recorded in the Gospel speak to the mind and to the heart. Let us then be thankful for what we have, and not be vainly or sinfully curious about what we have not, and about what, perhaps,

ought not to be granted to us. One day or other we shall all behold the majesty of God, but it will only be when the hour of our trial is over, when the period for judgment is at hand, and we are about to enter upon an eternity of happiness or misery. Knowing then the terrors of the Lord, and seeing that we have been timely called into his vineyard, we have no justifiable cause for standing wilfully idle. Whilst it is yet day, therefore, let us be Christians in deed and in truth; for “the night cometh, when no man can work."

DISCOURSE VI.

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2 TIM. chap. iii. ver. 16.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God."

HAD the prophet Jesus, like the impostor Mahomet, retired to the caverns of some solitary mountain, and meditating in secret upon the sacred object of his ministry come forth with a written Gospel for the instruction of mankind, the evidence for Christianity would have assumed a very different character from that which it now bears, and have become much more simple, though not more satisfactory, than it appears under the present and more complicated circumstances of the case. Had our Saviour recorded with his own infallible pen the doctrines of his holy religion and the transactions of his benevolent life-his merciful miracles and his wonderful predictions; and had he delivered the original document to his disciples at his death,

as the fountain from which all their future preaching was to be drawn, and the only oracle to which they were to refer for an illustration of the principles and a proof of the divine origin of Christianity-it would seem as if in that case nothing more would have been requisite to enable us to judge with certainty upon the truth or falsehood of the pretensions of Jesus, than this-that the Apostles should have borne unequivocal testimony to the genuineness of the book and the authenticity of its contents, and confirmed that testimony by their sufferings and death. For, in that case, if from the contents of the book the author could be proved to have been a prophet of God, the inspiration of the book itself as the production of a prophet would follow as a matter of course, and all its contents become infallibly true. But it has pleased the Almighty in his wisdom, that the information we possess with regard to the actions and doctrines of our Lord, should be transmitted down to posterity in a manner which in its nature and operation is altogether different from this. It is now universally admitted that the divine Author of our religion himself wrote nothing-that nothing concerning either his preaching or his proceedings was written by others during his life, and that those memorials which we possess and revere as the veritable and sure relations of his

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