their parents or their spiritual teachers. The dogmas of their church have never been seen in rational light. Such dogmas are matters of memory merely, and of thought from memory. Hence they can talk about their religion; be zealous in its propagation; rigid in a conformity to its ceremonial requisitions; while it has no influence whatever in altering the stamina of their character. It does not reach and change their love. They are still natural men; because still influenced by natural loves. All such men, both those who are influenced by motives of interest and policy, and those who are led by prejudices of education, are ready to belong to any party which is the most popular, and which can be assimilated externally to their previous modes of thinking. They cannot discriminate principles. They are in results only; and if results are the same, they care not about principles. These are natural men. Those of them who are internally good; that is, those whose wills and intentions are upright, or whose lives are, in their degree, conformed to the Lord's commandments, are natural-spiritual; that is, are from natural capable of being made spiritual. These will ultimately come into the new church. But those of them who are internally evil, that is, who are actuated by self-love and love of the world, are merely natural, and will ultimately become Socinians or Deists.

This we are inclined to think, will be the ultimity of the old christian church. Socinianism, and the next step, deism, are naturalism; and naturalism is the old church gone to seed.

Persons of the above descriptions form the mass of the christian church. There are others less numerous, but of more strongly marked character. They may be embraced in the general description of those who have confirmed themselves in the dogmas of their church from fallacious reasonings. These, too, and even those among them who are learned, notwithstanding their learning and supposed spiritual sagacity, are natural men; because they derive and confirm their tenets from the mere letter of the Scriptures, which consists of the appearances of truth only. These will decrease as the spirits of the dragon are cast out by Michael and his angels: that is, as the spirits of those who have been confirmed in the false doctrines

of the old church are removed from the world of mind, and there is a corresponding descent of the new heaven, which we are taught has been formed since the last judgment in 1757. And as the influences of this heaven descend upon earth, they will produce a resolution of the church into the two descriptions of men above noticed, namely, natural-spiritual and merely natural. There may be many distinctive varieties, but these will be the general divisions. To this end the commotions which are now racking the christian church are tending. For it is a universal law, that old affinities must be broken up, sometimes by violent processes, before new combinations can be formed. Not to use the example of threshing and winnowing grain which our text suggests, this is strikingly seen in the formation of chemical combinations; where the previous connection between the parts of substances is destroyed by pounding, concussion or attrition, so as to leave them free to obey other laws of attraction and form various other compositions-examples of which every one can see by daily observation of the arts. As a very familiar instance we may take the formation of mortar for building. The constituents of mortar are lime, sand and water. The sand consists of particles of stones separated from their previous connections by the operations of nature. The lime is made from limestone by the action of fire; by which process certain parts of the limestone are driven off and the connection of the remaining parts loosened. The water consists of two species of air, or of two gasses; and thus, though generally supposed to be a simple substance, is itself a compound. By the union of the water with the lime a further resolution takes place, which is called slacking the lime. By this process the parts of the lime are still further separated, and are brought into such a state that they can be combined with the sand. And thus by the union of lime, sand and water, mortar is formed. Now it is perfectly manifest that if you were to place unmodified limestone, sandstone and water together, no combination would take place: and thus you see, in this case, the necessity of a previous comminution of the parts.

Again, wheat in the sheaf must be first threshed, then winnowed, then ground, then bolted, before it can be made into

bread; and then it must be cut or broken, chewed, swallowed and digested, before it can go into the composition of our bodies. So universally.

Thus it must be in the formation of new spiritual combinations. Old spiritual affinities must be broken up, and the parts of old associations be comminuted by concussions of various kinds, before new associations can be formed by the attractions of new spiritual affinities. And this process is now going on. Almost all the denominations of the old christian church are quarreling among themselves, and splitting up into parties; and those that are not, have within themselves the elements of discord, which only require an occasion to burst forth into violent action. In this way the associations of the old church are breaking up; and the parts being thus left free, such of them as have an affinity will ultimately obey the attractions of the new heaven, and arranging themselves according to its order, will form the new associations of the new-jerusalem church, which is now descending from the Lord out of that heaven.

on.

Thus it may be seen that a great spiritual threshing is going The Lord has his fan in his hand, and, by his holy spirit of truth, he will "thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into his garner: but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (Matt. iii. 12.)

And it must now be clear that the touchstone which is to try the characters of men and to. effect this mighty work of sepation, is the divinity of that humanity which the Lord assumed upon earth. This, therefore, is that stone, on which "whosoever shall fall shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder," or separate in him the chaff from the corn.

Oh that this truth may so fall upon each one and all of usmay be so made the corner stone of all our doctrines, and so the ruling principle of our lives, that we may be winnowed clean from all our falses, and be garnered for ever in heaven! And oh thou Son of Man, "thrust in thy sickle and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap: for the harvest of the earth is ripe"!

SERMON XVIII.

MATT. IX. 12, 13.

"But when Jesus heard, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

WHEN the New Jerusalem has presented and enforced her peculiar views of the Lord, and it begins to be felt how completely these views subvert the commonly received notion that the Lord came to make a propitiation by offering a vicarious sacrifice for sin, we often hear it asked, What, then, did Jesus Christ come for? It is the design of this discourse to answer that question.

Our present text involves the doctrine, that man, both as an individual and as a mass, is fallen from a state of spiritual integrity, and that he cannot be again made whole without redemption. The text, therefore, teaches the necessity of redemption. It teaches that, without redemption, there can be no salvation. In other words, it teaches that mankind, individually and collectively, are spiritually sick-sick unto death; and that, without a physician, they must all perish eternally. It teaches that Jehovah God in humanity, whose high and holy name is Jesus Christ, is the true and only physician of the sinsick soul. And it teaches that the prescription which this physician gives for the sickness or sin of the soul is repentance. Our text, therefore, teaches, that there can be no salvation without cessation from sin; for repentance implies, not merely sorrow and contrition on account of sin, but the actual putting of sin away-the incessant putting away of all evil as sin

against God. In one word, the text teaches that there can be no regeneration without previous reformation-no doing good without first ceasing to do evil-no spiritual health in our spiritual bodies until, by the physicing of truth from the Lord, all diseased spiritual action is previously removed.

It should be observed, too, that our text exposes a very fundamental error in the prevailing christian church. For the fundamental doctrine of that church is, salvation by a vicarious sacrifice; whereas the text teaches that the Lord will not have sacrifice but mercy. The prevailing church teaches that man is saved by the sacrifice of a divine victim as an atonement to divine justice for man's violation of its law; and that the merit of this sacrifice, or this atonement, is imputed to man, not as his own, but as Christ's, righteousness: so that, when man, by faith, puts on this righteousness, he, though in himself a sinner, is regarded by Jehovah as just or righteous for Christ's sake. Thus, in the view of the prevailing christian church, man is saved by an imputed righteousness, a righteousness that is not his own, but the Lord's imputed to him,-and so imputed as to make him just in the eyes of Jehovah. Therefore, in this view, man is saved by a principle of justice through sacrifice. He is pardoned and accepted of Jehovah because he is just, or righteous, and made so, not by any act, either seemingly or really his own, but by the sacrifice of the innocent son of God. But the text expressly declares that the Lord came not to call the righteous, but sinners; and that he saves sinners, not by a sacrifice rendered to his justice, but by their own repentance of sin, which is an offering to his mercy. In truth, then, sinners never are made righteous in the eyes of Divine Justice, for even the heaven of heavens is unclean in his sight; but sinners are made righteous in the hands of the Divine Mercy, which are the operations and powers of the Divine Love, so influencing the hearts and lives of sinners as to enable sinners themselves to repent of their sins, in order that iniquity may no longer be their ruin.

The New Jerusalem adopts, therefore, the doctrine of the Lord in the text, and, with the apostle Paul, holds it to be a