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DEVOTEDNESS TO HIM.

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fore an assembled world." And through eternal ages he will bless them with his presence, and enrich them with his love and care. "For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." O boundless love! that before time began, pitied those that in time would be ruined and undone! Love, that reaches from God's high throne of eternal majesty, to earth's abyss of sin and woe! Love, that from this deep abyss raises countless myriads to glory, honour, and immortality! that will invest with an angel's eternal youth and splendour, millions, once the heirs of sin, decay, and death! that will bless with all an angel's happiness, these millions, once born to mourn, once children of misery! O boundless love! that travelling through eternity, in the greatness of its strength, like the sun travelling as a giant through the heavens, shall make eternity itself one unclouded day of holiness and joy! O love of Jesus Christ! vain were the wish to measure thy heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths! What dost thou not demand?

This love demands little when it demands your all, and shall it not have that little? could you wish to be but half devoted to him, whose love to you is boundless and eternal ? Whoever lingers in the Christian race, make it your study and your prayer to run with speed. Whoever is but half a Christian, make it your concern and supplication to yield to Christ your soul, your life, your heart, your all. Do you want more motives to this? Contrast your present state, if you are indeed a Christian, with what it was. Once your sins unpardoned, like a mountain, were pressing your soul to perdition; now that load is all removed, and your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. Once you had no hope, no true peace, no solid comfort; now peace in believing, and hope of the glory of God, and peace with God, all are or may be yours. Once you were the enemy, now the child, of God. Once the slave of Satan, now the friend of Christ. Once the heir of hell, but now of heaven. Once a fit companion for devils and the damned, now you have come to the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. Once all was dark and gloomy round you and before you,

(3) Matt. x. 32. Matt. xxv. 34.

(t) Rev. vii. 17.

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SHORTNESS OF TIME FOR GLORIFYING CHRIST.

now all is bright and cheerful. Once this dream of life was your all, and death a curse, a foe, that would end your fleeting comforts, and consign you to eternal night; now life is a shadow, eternal life your portion, and death itself a friend, that will conduct you to eternal day. And all this, and more than this, you enjoy through redeeming love. O what heart should not melt before such kindness? who that enjoys it, should wish to offer to Jesus any thing less than all his heart, all he has, and all he is?

§ 16. When we connect with this subject the shortness of time, and the nearness of eternity, the considerations should unite to urge upon us the most heart-felt devotedness to our blessed Lord. It is but a little span of service at the most, that you can present to that blessed Redeemer, who suffered in your stead. Time is short. Much of your life is already gone. How many that read this page, will never double the age they have already reached! How many never see as many more years as they have already seen! What a scanty glance surveys our departed years! a still scantier might probably survey our time to come. One may say, I have seen fifteen years, and another, I have seen twenty, and another, I have seen thirty, and another, I have seen forty, and very, very likely shall never see as many more; and O, what a narrow span is this, to offer in gratitude to him, who will give me a life so lasting, that ages as numberless as the flakes of winter snow, and the drops of summer rain, were a moment, compared with its immense duration! A thousand lives spent in his service would be short. How much shorter is the poor remnant of one! Ah! can you too early devote yourself to this adorable Saviour? can you too entirely be his to the last hour of life? O may it be your holy ambition to join with an apostle in declaring, Whether we live, we live to the Lord, and whether we die, we die to the Lord; whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's.

§ 17. Still indulge one reflection more. If Jesus is your glory and your boast, then indulge it to promote pity for others; but if you are not his humble disciple, indulge it that you may pity yourself.

How great is their guilt and folly who make light of such a Saviour! What an assemblage of wonders does his love display! Yet these are the wonders that almost all the world

THE GUILT OF MAKING LIGHT OF CHRIST.

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neglect. Oh! my Redeemer, few are the followers thy dying love has gained! Few, alas! regard thy sufferings, and seek the heaven thou hast so dearly purchased for man. Ah! deceived, deceiving world! such hopes to renounce, such a Saviour again to crucify, for the sake of a few poor, short years of earthly vanity! Perhaps you, my youthful readers, are not clear from such frightful guilt. Perhaps you neglect that Saviour who spread the heavens abroad, and who created the earth beneath you. Perhaps you indulge no thoughts of his love; or let any trifling folly drive such thoughts away. Perhaps you forget the eternal bliss of heaven, and the bitter agonies and bloody sufferings of the compassionate Saviour; and forget all these for trifles so mean, that they would not drive from your thoughts one day of promised pleasure, and yet they can induce you to forget a gracious God, a crucified Saviour, and an eternal world. Ah! foolish creature and unwise, thus to requite the Lord and Giver of salvation! The cruelty to yourself of such neglect, is as great as the ingratitude towards him. You, though young, and gay, and thoughtless, have a soul whose worth worlds cannot measure, whose price worlds cannot pay. You have been viewing the Redeemer's works, the earth, the sun, the stars of light, but your neglected soul in value outweighs them all. The period is coming, when of the sun, and all those meaner but brilliant fires, not one glittering fragment will remain; but never will that time arrive when your soul shall cease to live. Were one person to enjoy all the pleasure that has ever been enjoyed by all the millions that have ever lived, all that united would be but a moment of pleasure, compared with that enduring bliss, which ransomed souls possess in the kingdom of God. And were all the sufferings that through almost six thousand years have imbittered so many lives, and broken so many hearts; were all the sicknesses and pains, and all the dying pangs, of the countless millions that death has swept away; were all these united and poured upon one unhappy head, it would be less than a drop, compared with those mountainous billows of misery which, in the world to come, will overwhelm every neglecter of the Son of God. These all would not form eternal sufferings, not amount to everlasting sorrow. These immense sums of happiness or pain would have an end, but the joy or sorrow to which you are hastening can have none. How

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highly you value this fleeting life! How precious is even the uncertain prospect of a few years of peace and ease! How bitter are sufferings when no end of them can be seen! How bitter is it to the galley slave to think, that the chain which binds him, binds him for life! How severe a sentence of perpetual imprisonment! Were such your circumstances, how insupportable would the load of misfortune appear! These chains for life! This imprisonment for life! What tenfold bitterness would the words, "for life," add to the prison and the chain. How great are sorrows when only death can end them! Oh, what will eternal sorrows be? sorrows to which no death can ever bring relief? Oh, what will be the wretched creature's lot who has through eternity to exclaim, "Mercy once wooed me, but mercy is gone for ever! God pitied me, but has now left me for ever! the Saviour I slighted is departed for ever! for ever! Oh, that dreadful for ever! Peace, and hope, and comfort, all have left me for ever! and now this hellish prison is my abode for ever! This dismal gloom, this eternal heart-ache, this tormenting flame, are my sad portion for ever! O could that eternity be shortened! O could one hope gleam across the eternal gloom! O could death, though at the distance of infinite years, appear to end my sorrows and my being! But no such comfort can visit me! There is no gleam of hope in the distance of eternal night. There is no death that can end my being. The death I suffer is the death that never dies. God, and Christ, and hope, and mercy, and peace, and ease, are all gone! woe! woe is me! gone for ever and for ever!

Shall this be your lot! It must, it will, if you neglect that blessed Friend, whose glory and love this chapter has faintly represented to you.

CHAPTER III.

THE PERSONALITY, DEITY, AND INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

§ 1. WHEN the disciple of Jesus contemplates his Saviour's

dying love, the exalted allurements presented in the gospel to a life of piety, and the eternal terrors denounced against a life of vice, he is ready to wonder that all are not Christians. But when he looks inward, and, judging from his own heart, perceives what human nature is, he is perhaps as ready to wonder that Jesus has any followers in so dead a world. These views lead the mind to that Spirit of truth, who is the source of piety. To his agency the Christian acknowledges himself indebted for the religion he enjoys; and is encouraged and pleased by believing that this divine Friend will do that for others which he has done for him.

It is of high importance to have scriptural views respecting the Holy Spirit; the agency, and the divinity, and even the personality of the Spirit of God, have been denied. He has been represented as an angel, but most commonly by those who have denied his divinity, as a mere attribute, the power or the wisdom of God.

§ 2. In briefly surveying the Scripture testimony respecting the Holy Spirit, first observe those passages in which his name stands united with the Father and the Son. "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."a "The grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all."b

If the Holy Ghost were a mere divine attribute, and not a divine person, the former of these passages might be read, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of holy power, or holy wisdom, or divine operation. This, instead of representing the Lord Jesus as having spoken

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