to turn the whole force of his indignation | or the suspicion of his anger absorbs this on the head of an oppressor; and then think feeling altogether; and however much we of the feeling which will arise, of conse- may bear the semblance of love for his chaquence, in the heart of the latter. It will be racter, when we look to certain traits of it a feeling of hatred and antipathy. And yet in a detached and broken exhibition,-yet we do not see far into the secrecies of the this is perfectly consistent with the fact, that human constitution, if we do not perceive, the natural mind hates the person of the that, in perfect consistency with this feeling Deity,-that the natural mind is enmity of personal dislike to the man of virtue, who against God. And this ought to convince us, is hostile to him, there may exist, even in that even though there should be predisposhis vitiated soul, the love of moral esteem ing elements of love to him for his worth, it towards virtue residing in some other quar- is still indispensable, in order to change our ter, or exemplified by some other individual. hatred into affection, that we should look Instead of this virtue being realized on the upon God as having ceased from his anger, person of one who is an enemy to myself, or that we should see him arrayed in all the let it be offered by description to my no- tenderness of offered and inviting friendship. tice, in the person of one who lives in a There is a spell by which these elements distant country, or who lived in a distant are fastened, and which can never be done age, and let the thought of my particular away, till God woo me to friendship and adversary be not offensively suggested to confidence, by an exhibition of good-will. my mind by such a contemplation,—and I, Faith in the cross of Christ, is the priwith all those depravities which have pro- mary step of this approximation. To call voked the resentment of my upright neigh- for a disinterested affection towards God, bour against me, and have called forth in from one who looks upon God as an advermy heart a corresponding hatred towards sary, and that even though there should be him, will offer the homage of my regard in his bosom the undeveloped seeds of reand reverence towards the picture of moral gard to the worth or character of the Suexcellence, that is thus set before me. This preme, is to make a demand on a sentient may look an anomalous exhibition of our being, which, by his very constitution, he nature; but it certainly is not more so, than is unable to meet or to satisfy. And is not the well-known fact of a slave proprietor, this demand still more preposterous, when at one time wreaking his caprice and his it comes from a quarter where the decruelty on the living men who are around pravity of man is held to be so entire, that him, and at another weeping, in all the not one latent or predisposing element tosoftness of pathetic emotion, over the dis-wards the love of God is ascribed to him? tresses of a fictitious narrative. Distress Is it not a still vainer expectation to think, in one quarter may move our pity. Dis-in such hopeless circumstances as these, tress in another may be inflicted by our that ere man seizes the gift of redemption, own hand, to glut our vindictive propen- he shall import into his character the grace sities. Worth in the person of one who is of a pure and spiritual affection; that with indifferent, and still more of one who is the terror of his bosom yet unpacified, and friendly, may call forth our warm and ho- the countenance of God upon him as unrenest acknowledgments. Worth in the per-lenting as ever, there shall arise, in the midst son of another, the very principles of whose character have moved him to irritate our pride, or to wound our selfishness, may turn him into the object of our most passionate, determined, and unrelenting hostility.

of the state of non-existence ?

of all this agitation, a love to that Being, the very thought of whom brings a sense of insecurity along with it; or that a guilty creature, who, even if he had in a state of dormancy within him the principles of And thus it is, that I may have a natural moral regard to the Divinity, could not, taste for several of the virtues which enter under the burden of wrath still unappeased, into the Godhead, and at the same time, charm these principles out of the state of may have a hatred towards the person of their inaction,-that he, even were he utthe Godhead.-This natural taste may be terly destitute of these principles should be regarded by some, as a predisposing ele-able, under this burden, to charm them out ment in my heart towards the love of God; but so long as I view him armed in righte- And this, by the way, may serve to show ousness to destroy me, will this as effectu- the whole amount of that tasteful sentially repress the embryo affection, as if still mentalism, in virtue of which, a transient it were fast slumbering in the depths of but treacherous and hollow regard towards nonentity. It is willingly admitted, that the Divinity, may be detected in the hearts there are certain partial sketches of the cha- of those who nauseate the whole spirit and racter of the Deity, which, if offered to our contents of the Gospel. They admit into notice, in a state of separation from his their contemplation only as much of the anger against us, the children of disobe- character of God, as may serve to make dience, would kindle in our bosoms a feel-out a tender or an engaging exhibition of ing of tasteful admiration. But the dread, him. They may leave entire the ground

of our species. We allude to the holiness of the Godhead. Were we asked to define this holiness, we should feel that we were not giving to the term its full significancy, by saying, that it merely consisted in the absolute perfection of all the moral virtues of the Divinity. It is a term which, in the appropriate force of it, denotes contrast or separation. It was for this reason assigned to the vessels of the temple, and just because they were set apart from common use. To have made them common, would have been to make them unclean, or unholy. To have turned them to any ordinary or household purposes, would have been to inflict upon them such a touch of profanation, that their holiness would have departed from them. Had there been a full and perfect sense of God in every house, and in every

been equally felt by his creatures at all times, and in all places,—had the will of the Divinity held as presiding an influence over the every-day doings, as over the services of the solemn and extraordinary occasion,then there might have been no temple, and no ritual observation, and, of consequence, no room for such an application of the term holiness. A thing is not consecrated by being set apart from that which is equally pure and sacred with itself; and did there obtain an equal and universal purity throughout the whole system of nature, there could be no need for separation. In these circumces, there would have been no contrast, and, therefore, no demand for such a term as that of holiness.

work of his natural attributes; but, in every survey they take of the moral complexion of the Godhead, they refuse to look to all his moral attributes put together, and only fasten their regard upon one of them, even the attribute of indulgence. They cannot endure the view of his whole character; and should this view ever intrude itself, it puts to flight all the pathos and elegance of mere natural piety. Truth, as directed against themselves; holiness, as refusing to dwell in peaceful or approving fellowship with themselves; justice, as committed to a sentence of severe and inflexible retribution upon themselves,-all these are out of their contemplation at that moment, when the votaries of a poetical theism feel towards their imagined deity an evanescent glow of affection or reverence. But truth and conscience are ever meddling with this en-heart,-had the presence of the Divinity joyment; and piety resting on so frail and partial a foundation, never can attain an habitual ascendency over the character; and what at the best is fictitious, does not, and ought not, to have more than a rare and little hour of emotion given to it; and this may explain how it is, that with the very same individual, there may be both an occasional recurrence of devotional feeling, and a life of rooted and practical ungodliness. An illusory representation of God will no more draw away our affections from the world, or engage us in the solid and experimental business of obedience to its Maker, than the flippancy of a novel will practically influence the habits of nature, or of society. And thus it is, that the religion which is apart from Christianity, falls as far short of true religion, as the humanity we have just quoted, falls short of true humanity. But to return. We have already said, that even though there did exist in the heart of man a native regard to certain ingredients of worth in the character of the Divinity, a previous exhibition of good will is still essential, that the person of the Divinity may be endeared to him. And the argument for such a priority becomes much stronger, when it is made out, on a farther attention to this matter, that there is, in fact, no such native or predisposing regard. For, though it be true, that there are certain moral virtues, which, when realized upon man, draw towards them the love and the reverence even of our depraved nature, and which, when heightened into perfection upon God, should therefore, it might be conceived, obtain from nature, if placed in favourable circumstances, the homage of a love still more tender, and of a reverence still more profound;-yet there is one great and comprehensive quality by which all the moral attributes of the Godhead are pervaded, and for which we can detect no native and no kindred principle of attachment whatever, in the constitution

This may serve to illustrate the force and import of the term, as applied to the character of God. It does not signify the moral perfection of his character, taken absolutely. It signifies this perfection in relation to its opposite. When we look to the holiness of the divine character, we look to it in its aspect of lofty separation from all that can either taint or debase it. We look to its irreconcilable variance with sin. We look to the inaccessible height at which it stands above all the possible acquirements of created nature, insomuch, that he who possesses it, charges even his angels with folly: and when created nature is not only imperfect, but sinful, when we look to the recoil of the Divinity from all contact, and from all approximation, we think of the purer eyes than can behold iniquity, and of the presence so sacred, that evil cannot dwell with it. We think of that sanctuary into which there cannot enter any thing that defileth, or that maketh a lie,-a sanctuary guarded by all the jealousies of the Divine nature, and so repugnant to the approach of pollution, that if it offer to draw nigh, the fire of a consuming indignation will either check, or will destroy it.

Now, were the whole severity of this attribute directed against the violations of

t

social kindness, and social equity, we would | sense of guilt, and the consequent dread of admit that there was a ready coalescence God as an enemy. Nor could the love of with it in the principles of our natural con- God be inserted in his bosom, till by faith stitution. But when it searches into the in the expiation of the gospel, that which character of the most urgent affections of letteth was taken out of the way. But still nature, and there detects the very essence of more, if, in conformity to our present argusinfulness;-when it sits in judgment over ment, there be no such nascent affection for the preference given by every child of Adam the Divine character, is it hopeless to atto the creature, rather than the Creator, and tempt the establishment of love antecedently who holds this in righteous abomination;- to belief, or that attachment should take when it looks through a society of human possession of the heart, ere fear takes its debeings, and pronounces, in spite of all the parture away from it. Even if by the workjustice by which its interests are guarded, ing of some power unknown in the human and of all the humanity by which its ills are constitution, or by some effort, the success softened, or done away, that, wholly given of which has never yet, in a single instance, over to the enjoyment of the world, it is been experienced, there could be made to wholly immersed in the guilt of an idolatry, arise in the soul, the love of holiness, preby which the jealousies of the supreme and vious to the act of trusting in the offered spiritual God are provoked to the uttermost; Saviour, a terror at God, which, in the -when holiness is thus seen, not merely in absence of this trust, is the instinctive and its antipathy to crime, which is occasional universal feeling of nature, would just as and rare, but in its antipathy to an affection, effectually repress the love of holiness, as it the rooted obstinacy of which, and the en- does the love of truth, or of compassion, or grossing power of which, are universal,- of justice, from carrying us onwards to a then so far from the coalescence of approving regard for the person of the Godhead. To nature, do we behold the revolt of pained and put the love of God's character into a heart irritated nature. It no more follows, be- not yet brought into enlargement by the cause man loathes the cruelty or the injustice faith of the gospel, would just be to put it of his fellow-man, that he therefore carries into a prison-hold, and there to chain it in his heart a predisposing element of re- down to a fruitlessness and inactivity, where gard for the essential character of God, it would be wholly unproductive of love to than it follows, because a man would sicken God himself. Confidence must take the with disgust at the atrocities of a prison- precedency of this love, even in a bosom house, that he therefore feels his element already furnished with the preparatory eleand his joy to be in the humble piety of a ments of affection; and how much more esconventicle. A high-minded and an ho- sential then is it, that it should take the prenourable merchant finds room in his bosom cedency in a bosom, where these elements for the love both of truth and of the world. are altogether wanting? Faith is thus more Yet the one is an attribute of God, while strongly evinced to be a thing of prior and the love of the other is opposite to the love indispensable necessity. Without it, even of God. "If any man love the world," says the seed of any precious affection for the an apostle," the love of the Father is not in Godhead, stifled in embryo, would not blow him." He may like the transcript of truth, into luxuriance. And if our nature be such and of many other virtues on the face of a wilderness that no seed is there, if the the creature, but he likes not the Creator. thing wanted be the germination of a new He can gaze, and that even with rapture on principle, and not the developement of an the partial and imperfect sketches of the old,-if it be by a creative and not by a unfinished copy, but he shrinks from the mere fostering process, that we are transview of the entire original. He can hold formed into a meetness for heaven,-if the the intercourse of wistful thoughts, and fer- agency that is made to bear upon the human vent aspiration, the absent object of his soul, must have a power to regenerate as earthly regard, but he has neither taste nor well as to repair,-and if the promise of this capacity for communion with his Father in agency be given only to those who believe, heaven. 66 Holy, holy, holy, Lord God then let us no more linger, or be bewildered, Almighty," is the anthem of the celestial, in that abyss of helplessness from which but theirs is a delight which he cannot share faith alone can extricate the inquirer,-let in. And as surely as his body would need us no longer arrest the eye of confidence to be transformed, ere it could cease to have pain amid the agonies of hell,-so surely would his mind need to be transformed, ere it ceased to feel a confinement and an irksomeness amid the halleluiahs of paradise. Even though man, then, had in his heart a nascent affection for the character of God, this would be restrained from passing onwards to an affection for his person, by a

from that demonstration of good will, which is held out to the most widely alienated of sinners,-but hasten to place ourselves, even now, on that foundation of trust, where alone we are made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus, and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.

"Destroy this temple," says the Saviour, "and I will raise it up again in three days."

It is there alone that we can behold the for ever. This is the real destination of beauty of the lord and be safe. This place every individual who is redeemed from of greatest security, is also the place of among men. This should be the main obchiefest glory. It is when admitted into ject of all his prayers, and all his preparathis greater and more perfect tabernacle, tions. It is this which fits him for the comthat we can look on majesty without terror, pany of heaven; and unless there be a growand on holiness without an overwhelming ing taste for God, in the glories of his exsense of condemnation. The sinner en- cellency, for God, in the beauties of his circled in mercy looks in tranquil contem- holiness, there is no ripening, and no perplation on all that is awful and venerable infecting, for the mansions of immortality. the character of the Godhead,—and never | Though you have to combat, then, with the do truth, and righteousness, and purity, sluggishness of sense, and with the real appear in loftier exhibition before him, than, aversion of nature to every spiritual exercise, when withheld from his own person, he you must attempt, and stendously cultivate, sees the whole burden of their avenging the habit of communion with God. And laid upon the head of the great Sacrifice. as no man knoweth the Father save the Son "One thing have I desired of the Lord," reveal him, and as it is by the Spirit that says the Psalmist, "that I may dwell in the Christ gives light to those who believe in courts of the Lord, all the days of my life, him;-for the attainment of this great moral to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to en- and spiritual accomplishment, do what the quire in his temple." It is not till we are Apostle directs you, when he says, "Keep within the portals of the place of refuge yourselves in the love of God, by praying that this desire can obtain its fulfilment. in the Holy Ghost." Your first endeavours Selfishness may have originated the move- may be feeble, and fatiguing, and fruitless. ment which took us there. The fear of the But God will not despise the day of small coming wrath may have lent celerity to our things,-nor will the light of his countefootsteps. A joyful sense of deliverance nance be always withheld from those who may have been felt, ere the glories of the aspire after it,-nor will the soul that thirsts divine character were seen in bright and after God, be left for ever unsatisfied,--and convincing manifestation. The love of the life and peace of being spiritually mindgratitude may have kindled within us,- ed, will come in rich experience to his feeland, with the Psalmist, we may have to seek, ings,-and the whole habit of his tastes and to inquire, and to have daily exercise and enjoyments, will be in a diametric opand meditation, ere the love of moral esteem position to that of the children of the world, has attained the place of ascendency which-God being the habitation to which he rebelongs to it. Nevertheless, the chief end sorts continually,-God being the strength of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him of his heart, and his portion for evermore.

SERMON XII.

The Emptiness of Natural Virtue.

"But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you."-John v. 24.

WHEN it is said, in a former verse of the gospel, that Jesus knew what was in man, we feel, that it is a tribute of acknowledgment, rendered to his superior insight into the secrecies of our constitution. It was not the mere faculty of perceiving what lay before him, that was ascribed to him by the Evangelist. It was the faculty of perceiving what lay disguised under a semblance, that would have imposed on the understanding of other men. It was the faculty of detecting. It was a discerning of the spirit, and that not through the transparency of such unequivocal symptoms, as brought its character clearly home to the view of the observer. But it was a discerning of the spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, to an ordinary spectator, was a thick and impenetra

ble hiding place. It was a discovery there of the real posture and habitude of the soul. It was a searching of it out, through all the recesses of duplicity, winding and counterwinding in such a way as to elude altogether the eye of commom acquaintanceship. It was the assigning to it of one attribute, at the time when it wore the guise of another attribute,—of utter antipathy to the nature and design of his mission, at the very time that multitudes were drawn around him, by the fame of his miracles,--of utter indifference about God, at the very time that they zealously asserted the sanctity of his sabbaths, and resented as blasphemous, whatever they felt to be an usurpation of the greatness which belonged to him only.

It was in the exercise of this faculty, that

Jesus came forward with the utterance of our text. The Jews, by whom he was surrounded, had charged him with the guilt of profanation, and sought even to avenge it by his death, because he had healed a man on the sabbath day. And their desire of vengeance was still more inflamed, by what they understood to be an assertion, on his part, of equality with God. And yet, under all this appearance, and even with all this reality of a zeal about God, did he who knew what was in man pronounce of these his enemies, that the love of God was not in them. I know you says he,-as if at this instant he had put forth a stretch of penetration, in order to find his way through all the sounds of godliness which he heard, and through all the symptoms of godliness which he saw,-I know that there does not exist within you that principle, which links to God, the whole of God's obedient creation,-I know that you do not love him, and that, therefore, you are utterly in want of that affection, which lies at the root of all real, and of all acceptable. godliness.

It is mortifying to the man who possesses many accomplishments of character, to be told, that the greatest and most essential accomplishment of a moral being, is that of which he has no share,-that the principle on which we expatiated in our last discourses does not, in any of its varieties, belong to him,-that, wanting it, he wants not merely obedience to the first and the greatest commandment, which is the love of God, but he wants what may be called the impregnating quality of all acceptable obedience whatever, the spirit which ought to animate the performance of every other commandment, and without which the most laborious conformity to the law of Heaven, may do no more than impress upon his person the cold and lifeless image of loyalty, while in his mind there is

not one of its essential attributes.

We know not a more useful exercise than that of carrying round this conviction amongst all the classes and conditions of humanity. In the days of our Saviour, the pride of the Pharisees stood opposed to such a demonstration; and in our own days, too, there are certain pretensions of worth, and of excellence, which must be disposted, ere we can hope to obtain admittance for the humiliating doctrine of the gospel. For this gospel, it must be observed, proceeds upon the basis, not of a partial, but of an entire and universal depravity among the men of the world. It assimilates all the varieties of the human character into one common condition of guilt, and need, and helplessness. It presumes the existence of such a moral disease in every son and daughter of Adam, as renders the application of the same moral remedy indispensa

ble to them all. The formalists of Judea did not like to be thus grouped with publicans and harlots, under one description of sinfulness. Nor do men of taste, and feeling, and graceful morality, in our present day, readily understand how they should require the same kind of treatment, in the work of preparing them for immortality, with the most glaringly profligate and unrighteous of their neighbourhood. They look to the ostensible marks of distinction between themselves and others;-and what wider distinction, they think, can possibly be assigned, than that which obtains between the upright or the kind-hearted, on the one hand, and the ungenerous or dishonest, on the other? Now, what we propose, in the following discourse, is to lead them to look a little farther,—and then they will see at least one point of similarity between these two classes, the want of one common ingredient with both, and which attaches to each of them a great moral defect, that can only be repaired by one and the same application.

It is well when we can find out an accordancy between the actual exhibition of human nature on the field of experience, and the representation that is given of this nature on the field of revelation. Now, the Bible every where groups the individuals of our species, into two general and distinct classes, and assigns to each of them its appropriate designation. It tells us of the vessels of wrath, and of the vessels of mercy; of the travellers on a narrow path, and on a broad way; of the children of this world, and the children of light; and, lastly, of men who are carnally minded, and men who are spiritually minded. It employs these terms in a meaning so extensive, that by each couplet of them it embraces all individuals. There is no separate number of persons, forming of themselves a neutral class, and standing without the limits of the two others. And were it possible to conceive, that human nature, as it exists at present in the world, were laid in a map before us, you would see no intermediate ground between the two classes which are thus contrasted in the Bible,-but these thrown into two distinct regions, with one clear and vigorous line of demarcation between them.

We often read of this line, and we often read of the transition from the one to the other side of it. But there is no trace of any middle department to be met with in the New Testament. The alternative has only two terms, and ours must be the one or the other of them. And as surely as a day is coming, when all the men of our assembled world shall be found on the right or on the left hand of the throne of judgment-so surely do the carnal and the spiritual regions of human nature, stand apart from each other; and all the men who are now living on the surface of the