though reigning in the world, to lay aside their ensign of power, and to cheer some peaceful home of virtue and of loveliness, with the intercourse of a kindness that shall only seem kindred with its own!

And here I cannot omit to present to the mind of the Christian reader, a view of the doctrine of ELECTION, which in this connexion has deeply gladdened my own heart. What is Election? It is the sovereign good pleasure and mercy of God, wherein he has chosen in Christ, those whom he has been pleased to love in him from the foundation of the world. And when, as in the words of our burial service, "He shall have accomplished the number of his elect," he shall then "hasten his kingdom." There shall then be no reason why he should delay his joy in his eternal union with his Church. Now, "the Bride is ready, and the marriage supper of the Lamb is come!" Now the glory of his Church is realized! Now the prayer is fulfilled, "that they may be one:" one in him, and one in each other! Now the scorn of the profane, joyful in the divisions of Zion, shall cease; and the eternal GLORY, shall be the eternal ONENESS of the Church: ONE MIND, ONE WILL, ONE JOY, ONE SERVICE, one duration and conformity of bliss to the bliss of Christ. This shall be their ONENESS for ever: one activity of zeal, charity, beneficence and mercy to man! And THEN, and surely not till then, shall the intercessory prayer be accomplished, and a renovated world shall know

that the Father sent the Son," to be the anointed Ruler, and Source of pardon and strength, when manifested as King of Kings and LORD OF LORDS.

What then, I ask, is the doctrine of Election? It is "Glory to God in the highest, and in earth peace, and good will to men." I recur to the feeble illustration already given. Mark that land revolted, ruined, lawless, ignorant, miserable: the sources of knowledge are dried up: the dispositions of the inhabitants are hostile to order, peace, and law, and civilization. The monarch surveys the wretched, perturbed, rebellious, and ignorant population. He possesses a power over the human heart: he selects a chosen and faithful band: he makes them willing to learn, and glad to obey: he educates, feeds, comforts them: he raises them to honour, and rank, and influence, and power: he makes them like himself: he infuses into them his own character; his love of justice, truth, and charity: he associates them in his government, and kindles within their breasts a burning zeal for purity, order, and happiness: he puts an inferior sceptre into their hands: he gives them power over the wills of others: he points out to them the desolate and ignorant population of his kingdom, and says, "freely ye have received, now freely give!"

Toil for me as I have toiled for you, "and the wilderness yet shall smile, and the revolted shall kiss the sceptre of my love." Such is ELECTION. It is wondrous to choose the wretched and the guilty, in order to pardon freely, and to freely save; to make slaves a partner of the throne; to give to the rebel a renovated heart of moral purity and strength! But, oh! is it not wondrous also, to say to that elected and redeemed band, "GO AND DO YE LIKEWISE."

CHAPTER X.

The Elect Church.

THE reluctance of mankind to recognise the practical authority of God, is apparent in the whole operations and history of human societies. I have before remarked the indistinct notion of his distant and paternal sovereignty to be favourable to human vanity, and tranquillizing to human fear; but the vivid and influential notion of his moral government, to press far too heavily upon the principle of independence, to gain a ready admittance into the heart. Rebellion characterizes human crime; and if the offended Monarch, by any perversion of the understanding in the rebel, can be supposed to exercise his power to ward off evils which belong to the weakness and inconsistency of the rebellious, they will gladly admit the shadowy obligation of a nominal homage to his crown; but if the question of practical and actual allegiance be superadded, this shadowy obligation previously admitted will change into a rugged and substantial reluctance to any such admission of his claims.

This principle of resistance to the sovereign authority of God, is strikingly manifested in the effort made to break down the strength of those mighty barriers which divide the converted from the unconverted; to place human virtue upon the same level of natural advantages, and to give to individuals the glory of their own merit, and the value of their own exertions. The doctrine of Election is oppressive to the human mind. The privilege of mercy they deem to be inclusive, not exclusive. It must belong to the claims of the subject, not to the will of the governor, and yet this doctrine of Election, thus descried as tyrannical in the sovereign, and destructive of moral virtue in the subject, appears to me to be interwoven with every

part of the human system; to be imbedded, as it were, in all the analogies of society, and to exhibit, in very truth, the most expansive views of the divine benevolence.

I. Let us advert to the analogies of the human system.

Is not the principle of Election to special advantages visible on every side? Do we not find it in the very climates and various temperatures of the earth? and in the combinations of political institutions? Why are the ravages of disease, and the perils of climate, connected with one country and not with another? Why are political advantages the birthright of one people and not of another? Why is the power of despotism in the hand of an European, to oppress the victim of weakness in the Asiatic or African? Why are the refinements of science prevalent in one quarter of the globe, and the degradations of barbarism in the other? And is not the same inequality, the same special choice in the distribution of benefits, equally apparent in the superiorities of mental character? Why are some men endowed with personal qualities which at once lift them above the level on which the multitudes stand around them? Why have the names of Alfred, Newton, Bacon, or Locke, become endeared to our own land, but because they possessed qualifications superior to those which mark out the ordinary portraiture of human agents.

It may be admitted that men of this stamp have cultivated their talents, and have exercised them in a judicious manner; but was not the possession of those talents a gift exclusive of their own sagacity or their own industry? Was it not an exclusive privilege which God himself conferred? Is not then, I ask, the doctrine of personal election to eternal life, in accordance with all these analogies of climate, civilization, science, art, and mental endowments? May not God bestow his gifts independently of man's permission? May he not, with the hand of sovereign power, arrest the rebel in his guilty course; pour light upon his understanding; address his own mysterious reasonings to his heart, and under the wondrous motives derived from incarnate love, bind him in a new and blessed allegiance to his government for ever? May he not place him in special mercy, beneath the grasp of his Almighty hand, and never let go his hold till he has guided him in safety through the foes and the snares of life, and presented him "faultless before the presence of his glory," with deep and exceeding joy? Shall this act of clemency be denied to him because it has the character of exclusion and speciality? "Is thine eye evil because I am good?"

II. But is not this very doctrine, repulsive as it may be in its immediate aspect to human pride-is it not, in fact, a doc

trine connected with the most expansive operations of divine benevolence?

The gifts of God are not limited in their influence, although they may be exclusive in their original distribution. The sun cannot shine specially on one favoured head, without pouring its warmth and light on many beside. To elevate one, is in truth to elevate many. Have not human beings derived the largest measure of their blessings from the principle of apparent exclusion? Is there a gift so bounteous to a family, a parish, a province, a nation, as an individual endowed with high qualities, and raised in moral excellence above the level of his kindred men?

Has the world reason to murmur because good and great men are occasionally raised up to give the law to society, the tone to morals, or the lofty purpose of virtue to many inferior minds which revolve around them? Is speciality of endowment a solitary blessing, drawing aside the possessor from active usefulness, and forcing him away from all the sympathies which bind and refresh and invigorate the mass of his fellows? Rather is not superiority of talent, industry, or virtue, beneficial to others precisely in the degree in which it exists in those on whom it is, as many are inclined to term it, arbitrarily conferred? Is not a special and direct endowment to any individual, an intermediate endowment to those around him? Can a light be in the hand of one, and its rays be restrained from emanating to others? Is a cold, dull solitude the element in which mental superiority delights to dwell? and would our happiness have been augmented if one dreary monotony of talent, during successive ages, had overspread the aspect of human society? If we could have reduced to our own low level the towering aspirations of Alfred, Newton, Bacon, and others, should we by this depression have gained any large accession to our enjoyment, if thus successful in the effort to contract the principle of generous but mysterious endowment, and to refuse that a single healthful wave should ripple over the stagnant surface of our degradation and ignorance? The chief value surely of these special gifts to individuals, is found in the result to society at large. Our best blessings have flowed down to us from these individual channels. It is the property of mercy to confer a two-fold benefit. It blesses alike him who gives, and him who receives; and it is the glorious prerogative of superior virtue to impart freely that which it has freely received. There is a noble restlessness in lofty minds, which ever forces forward the lingering work of human improvement and happiness.

And this is relatively true of all degrees of superior virtue.

The generous mind, however limited its physical power, and however narrow its actual range of effort, is large and unfettered in its sympathies and its wishes. In these, at least, it is kindred with its God, and presses on towards the imitation of the divine beneficence. The virtuous servant, the virtuous cottager, the virtuous child, however small his measure of special endowment above his fellows, is yet a real blessing, as far as that endowment extends. In his little sphere, bounded though it may be by poverty, or circumscribed by knowledge, he is yet a steady light, a humble guide, a holy example, a voice of truth, an encouragement to what is good, a reproof to what is evil. It comes within his narrow means to wipe away some tear, which the winds of heaven might otherwise dry up; to cheer some sorrow, which might otherwise rankle in the unsolaced heart; to fix some purpose of virtuous action, which was just wavering to its fall; and to impart some counsel, just as error was making good its cruel grasp upon the deluded understanding. In all this election of individuals to peculiar moral or mental advantages, do we not mark the beneficent arrangement of God, who associates the diffusion of his mercies with human agency, and who chooses, in mysterious sovereignty, his own instruments, that they may become subservient to his higher aims of mercy to mankind?

And has not the doctrine of personal election to eternal life in Christ Jesus, the same high and hallowed bearing upon the world's welfare? Are the elect "gathered out of every tongue, and tribe, and people," and prepared by special grace, amidst the trials of time, for the glories of eternity?-Are they united to Christ with an ultimate oneness, which shall eradicate every single feeling or principle of non-conformity to his will?-Are they thus united to him as a bride is prepared for her beloved and her friend, in order to the enjoyment of a solitary felicity? OR to be made also instrumental to the felicity of others? Perfect love disposes to perfect imitation. We resemble that which our affections supremely embrace. What then has been the conduct of our Lord Jesus Christ in the intercourse which he has deigned to establish between himself and the earth? He came to forget himself, in his recollection of the misery of others. He came to portray his Father's character, by the exhibition of his own; to make known his Father's generosity, by the costly sacrifice he was himself ready to make he came amidst the grovelling, the selfish, and the earthly, to tell a tale of disinterested love, at which such selfishness might well have hung down her head. He came amidst the guilty, the wretched, and the lost, to reveal a design of mercy, at which angels rejoice with exceeding joy, and before which the aching and