ings are curses-his whole state is a perdition. This is not conjecture. It is fact. It is history. It is as true as anything you credit on the testimony of your own senses. Try the case yourself and you will find it precisely so. All who have tried it have so found it. We know from the very nature of man, that the state of the soul determines for weal or wo, and produces either the miseries which are unmixed with comfort, or the happiness which no outward evil can destroy. "He shall save his people from their sins." Jesus blesses us when he turns us from our evil tempers, and desires, and pursuits. Then are we saved, when we are rescued from sin. And only so far as sin is destroyed within us, have we any part in the blessings of Christianity.

Do you ask now, what you must do to be saved? You are only inquiring how you shall be freed from that earthliness of mind which shows itself in a forgetfulness of God, self-indulgence, vain desires, inordinate ambition, pride, envy, malice, covetousness, discontent, love of the world, and all other evils of the internal condition. If you ask sincerely, you really wish to put away from you every sin, great or small as it may seem. You wish not merely to seem good like those you admire, but to be good like them. It is your purpose to do with all your strength, as soon as you know what you must do, all that is necessary to save your soul. Consider how much is implied here. Be not deceived. Do you really desire to become, at any cost, a pure and thus a happy being ;to yield yourself to God, to bind yourself to Jesus, to cast in your lot with his friends, and to live on earth the life you hope to live in heaven? Beware lest you mistake

a

mere restless discontent with yourself and things

around you, for a desire of salvation. How many in such a frame have fled to the company of the faithful with no faith in their own hearts, and have increased guilt when they supposed they were seeking salvation. They fled from hell, but not from sin. They were uneasy because they were in an evil condition, not because they were of an evil mind.

It is we

And

The first thing to be done, if we would be saved, is to set about an investigation of our minds, that we may know what it is which we, in particular, must be delivered from, in order to our being completely good, and so prepared for complete happiness. Much evil results often from confounding ourselves with other people. We want to make their case our own. But in truth we are not at all concerned with their case. who are asking what we must do to be saved. each one must be saved in a manner conformed to his own present need, not to any foreign pattern. We have a particular spiritual state. We know where we have been blameworthy, where we have sinned against God, our neighbor, and ourselves, and it is with that we have to do, and nothing beyond or abroad. That evil propensity on which you can, as it were, lay your finger and say, I have indulged this unrestrainedly, this is one of the foes which have wounded my conscience and tormented my heart, is the evil you are to be saved from. Make the whole a strictly individual matter, and let other people mind their own case in the same way. Your salvation will not then be hindered by any idle and delusive comparisons, which feed pride, and abet prejudice, or produce despondence and distract the thoughts from the main points to be considered.

Having well ascertained our own spiritual state, the work to be done is before us. The means of accomplishing it are prescribed in the New Testament. But we are not to take up the sacred volume now as a general directory, but as a special guide, to be used, not as the mariner may use a map of the world, but as he uses the particular chart which marks out the course of his present voyage. Some rules meet all cases. Some are specially adapted to one or more. These we must select and dwell upon; not to the neglect of other useful parts of scripture, but as the parts to be most closely applied to our own needs. Generalities have no place where we are engaged upon what is special. It is what the bible says to persons of the character you find yourselves to be of, that first and most peculiarly demands your study. And this you must use as the instrument with which you are to attempt to eradicate your own sins, praying, at every effort, to Him who cherishes and succeeds all holy purposes by his quickening spirit.

We have used the word effort, and it is a very important one. Salvation is sought by many, as if it were of the nature of a cure by medicine, and not a recovery by exertion. But in truth, if you wish to break up a moral disease, effort is vitally important. By doing just the opposite of all we have done, so far as that was wrong, we come to be habitually good. Suppose the sin of a too quick and violent resentment be one of those we have hitherto indulged. How are we to get quit of it? When we are next provoked, by striving to suppress every word and deed corresponding to the resentment rising within. If we succeed, we have gained one victory, and we have won it by effort. And so in every sin, whatever it be, our

part is effort, resisting even unto blood. In like manner a virtue, which we have neglected, must be won by oftrepeated attempts to do what it implies. Nothing less will secure the acquisition. And the more of these attempts we make, the more of the virtue we shall gain. The selfish sets himself to work for other people, obliges himself to have a proper regard to their feelings, wants, and characters, giving up his own private pleasure, as often as he may do them good by it, and denying himself to all covetous, sordid, and unkind practices. The efforts he makes lead him to forget himself, and think more of others, by doing more for them. And so in other cases. He who so believes in the Son of God, as to have no stronger desire than to become completely like him in all the purity and excellence of his celestial virtues, he it is who shall receive, as the end of his faith, the salvation of his soul. Where this faith produces and sustains this desire, there cannot but be the most earnest efforts toward the attainment of every quality on which the safety, perfection, and happiness of human nature depend.

UNBELIEF.

THERE is no occasion to fear that a fair examination of the grounds on which our religion rests its claims, will ever result in anything but a stronger conviction of its truth and authority. But when one meets with such books as that of the notorious Thomas Paine, his Age of Reason, or the publications now issuing from the Free Press in New York, it is hard to restrain the emotions of mingled indignation and sorrow which are excited by

them. If these productions were to fall into the hands of none but such as are competently furnished for a just decision upon the questions they pretend to settle, they were comparatively harmless. We are not averse to have the evidences on which Christianity is founded, tested by all who are well enough informed to be in no danger of imposition, and who are honestly engaged for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Nay, every sincere believer would rejoice to see men of intelligence and integrity heartily embarked in such an undertaking as had for its object the most thorough investigation of the great subjects which Christianity presents. But he must deprecate the work of such as seek to win to the side of doubt, by ridicule which abashes the weak, and reasonings which confound the ignorant; by infusing prejudice before inquiry is begun, and creating hostility as a prelude to disbelief. There are many more who will be ruined without being convinced, than will give up their faith as a consequence of even the partial examination of its evidences, which these writings might induce.

It were worth while, if a calm hearing could be had in such a case, to suggest to those who are so ready to thrust their infidelity into everybody's mind, by any means, fair or foul, which they can command, one sober consideration, which, as men of common humanity, they cannot refuse to weigh. What have you to give us instead of that you would take away? What rich blessing will you substitute in the room of religion, in the heart of this or that poor man, whose daily toil is all sweetened now by a humble trust in Jesus Christ? What boon will you carry to that desolated house, where mother, father, sister,