there has, with many, been a sad overlook- | man happy in heaven, it would suffice siming of what is no less indispensable, even ply to transmit him there with the same his personal capacity. And yet even on the taste, and to surround him with the same lowest and grossest conceptions of what circumstances. But God has not so orderthat is which constitutes the felicity of hea-ed heaven. He will not suit the circumven, it would be no heaven, and no place stances of heaven to the character of man ; of enjoyment at all, without a personal and therefore to make it, that man can be adaptation on the part of its occupiers, to the happy there, nothing remains but to suit kind of happiness which is current there. the character of man to the circumstances If that happiness consisted entirely in sights of heaven; and, therefore it is, that to bring of magnificence, of what use would it be to about heaven to a sinner, it is not enough confer a title-deed of entry on a man who that there be the preparation of a place for was blind? To make it heaven to him, his him; there must be a preparation of him eyes must be opened. Or, if that happiness for the place-it is not enough that he be consisted in sounds of melody, of what use meet in law, he must be meet in personwould a passport be to the man who was it is not enough that there be a change in deaf? To make out a heaven for him, a his forensic relation towards God, there change must be made on the person which must be a change in the actual disposition he wears, as well as in the place which he of his heart towards him; and unless delioccupies, and his ears must be unstopped, vered from his earth-born propensitiesOr, if that happiness consisted in fresh and unless a clean heart be created, and a right perpetual accessions of new and delightful spirit renewed-unless transformed into a truth to the understanding, what would rights holy and godlike character, it is quite in and legal privileges avail to him who was vain to have put a deed of entry into his sunk in helpless idiotism? To provide him hands-heaven will have no charm for with a heaven, it is not enough that he be him--all its notes of rapture will fall transported to a place among the mansions with tasteless insipidity upon his ear-and of the celestial: he must be provided with justification itself will cease to be a privia new faculty, and as before a change be- lege. hooved to be made upon the senses; so Let us cease to wonder, then, at the frenow, ere heaven can be heaven to its occu- quent application, in Scripture, of this pier, a change must be made upon his phrase to a state of personal feeling and mind. And, in like manner, my brethren, character upon earth; and rather let us if that happiness shall consist in the love press upon our remembrance the important of God for his goodness, and in the love of lessons which are to be gathered from such God for the moral and spiritual excellence an application. In that passage where it which belongs to him-if it shall consist in is said, that the "kingdom of God is not the play and exercise of affections directed meat and drink, but righteousness, and to such objects as are alone worthy of their peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," there most exalted regard-if it shall consist in can be no doubt that the reference is altothe movements of a heart now attracted in gether personal, for the apostle is here conreverence and admiration towards all that trasting the man who, in these things, is noble, and righteous, and holy-it is not serveth Christ, with the man who eateth enough to constitute a heaven for the sin- unto the Lord, or who eateth not unto the ner, that God is there in visible manifesta- Lord. And in the passage now before us, tion, or that heaven is lighted up to him in there can be as little doubt, that the refera blaze of spiritual glory. His heart must ence is to the kingdom of God, as fixed and be made a fit recipient for the impression substantiated upon the character of the of that glory. Of what possible enjoyment human soul. He was just before alluding to him is heaven, as his purchased inherit- to those who could talk of the things of ance, if heaven be not also his precious and Christ, while it remained questionable his much-loved home? To create enjoy- whether there was any change or any effect ment for a man, there must be a suitable-that could at all attest the power of these ness between the taste that is in him, and the objects that are around him. To make a natural man happy upon earth, we may let his taste alone, and surround him with favourable circumstances-with smiling abundance, and merry companionship, and bright anticipations of fortune or of fame, and the salutations of public respect, and the gaieties of fashionable amusement, and the countless other pleasures of a world, which yields, so much to delight and to diversify the short-lived period of its fleeting generations. To make the same

things upon their person and character. This is the point which he proposed to ascertain on his next visit to them. "I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." It is not enough to mark you as the children of this kingdom; or as those over whose hearts the reign of God is established; or as those in whom a preparation is going on here for a place of glory and blessedness hereafter-that you know the

terms of orthodoxy, or that you can speak | dom of God cometh to them in word only its language. If even an actual belief in while not in power. its doctrine could reside in your mind, without fruit and without influence, this would as little avail you. But it is well to know, both from experience and from the information of him who knew what was in man, that an actual belief of the Gospel, is at all times an effectual belief-that upon the entrance of such a belief, the kingdom of God comes to us with power, being that which availeth, even faith, working by love, and purifying the heart, and overcoming the world.

But again, what is translated word in this verse, is also capable of being rendered by the term reason. It may not only denote that which constitutes the material vehicle by which the argument conceived in the mind of one man is translated into the mind of another; it may also denote the argument itself; and when rendered in this way, it offers to our notice a very interesting case, of which there are not wanting many exemplifications. In the case just now adverted to, the mere word is in One of the simplest cases of the kingdom the mouth, without its corresponding idea of God in word, and not in power, is that being in the mind; but in the case immeof a child, with its memory stored in pas-diately before us, ideas are present as well sages of Scriptures, and in all the answers as words, and every intellectual faculty is to all the questions of a substantial and at its post, for the purpose of entertaining well-digested catechism. In such an in-them-the attention most thoroughly awake stance, the tongue may be able to rehearse and the curiosity on the stretch of its utthe whole expression of evangelical truth, while neither the meaning of the truth is perceived by the understanding, nor, of consequence, can the moral influence of the truth be felt in the heart. The learner has got words, but nothing more. This is the whole fruit of his acquisition; nor would it make any difference, in as far as the effect at the time is concerned, though, instead of words adapted to the expression of Christian doctrine, they had been the words of a song, or a fable, or any secular narrative and performance whatever. This is all undeniable enough-if we could only prevail on many men, and many women, not to deny its application to themselves if we could only convince our grown-up children of the absolute futility of many of their exercises-if we could only arouse from their dormancy our listless readers of the Bible-our men, who make a mere piece-work of their Christianity; who, in making way through the Scriptnres, do it by the page, and, in addressing prayers to their Maker, do it by the sentence; with whom the perusal of the sacred volume, is absolutely little better than a mere exercise of the lip, or of the eye; and a preference for orthodoxy is little better than a preference for certain familiar and well-known sounds; where the thinking principle is almost never in contact with the matter of theological truth, however conversant both their mouths and their memories may be with the language of it-so that in fact the If it be of importance to know, that a doctrine by the knowledge of which, and man may lay hold, by his memory, of all the power of which it is, that we are saved, the language of Christianity, and yet not lies as effectually hidden from their minds, be a Christian-it is also of importance to as if it lay wrapt in hieroglyphical obscu- know that a man may lay hold by his unrity; or, as if their intellectual organ was derstanding, of all the doctrine of Chrisshut against all communication with any tianity, and yet not be a Christian. It is thing without them; and thus it is, that our opinion, that in this case the man has what is not perceived by the mental eye, only an apparent belief, without having an having no possible operation upon the men- actual belief that all the doctrine is contal feelings, or mental purposes, the king-ceived by him, without being credited by

most eagerness-and the judgment most busily employed in the work of comparing one doctrine, and one declaration with another-and the reason conducting its long or its intricate processes; and, in a word, the whole machinery of the mind as powerfully stimulated by a theological, as it ever can be by a natural or scientific speculation-and yet, with this seeming advancement that it makes from the language of Christianity to the substance of Christianity, what shall we think of it, if there be no advancement whatever in the power of Christianity-no accession to the soul of any one of those three ingredients, which, taken together, make up the apos tle's definition of the kingdom of God-no augmentation either of its righteousness, or its peace, or its joy in the Holy Ghostthe man, no doubt, very much engrossed and exercised with the subject of divinity, but with as little of the real spirit and character of divinity, thereby transferred into his own spirit, and his own character, as if he were equally engrossed and equally exercised with the subject of mathematics-remaining, in short, after all his doctrinal acquisitions of the truth, an utter stranger to the moral influence of the truth; and proving, in the fact of his being practically and personally the very same man as be fore, that if the kingdom of God is not in word, it is as little in argument, but in power.

him that it is the object of his fancy, and its departed excellence. The one is without being the object of his faith-and what faith will do on the other side of that, as on the one hand, if the conviction time. But the other just as certainly faith be real, the consequence of another heart, must do on this side of time. It is here and another character, will be sure; so, on that heaven begins. It is here that eternal the other hand, and on the principle, of life is entered upon. It is here that man "by their fruits shall ye know them," if he first breathes the air of immortality. It is want the fruit, it is just because he is in upon earth that he learns the rudiments of want of the foundation--if there be no pro- a celestial character, and first tastes of ceduce, it is because there is no principle; lestial enjoyments. It is here, that the well having experienced no salvation from sin of water is struck out in the heart of renohere, he shall experience no salvation from vated man, and that fruit is made to grow the abode of sinners hereafter. If faith unto holiness, and then, in the end, there is were present with him, he would be kept life everlasting. The man whose threadby the powers of it unto salvation, from bare orthodoxy is made up of meagre and both; but destitute as he proves himself to unfruitful positions, may think that he be now of the faith which sanctifies, he will walks in clearness, while he is only walkbe found then, in the midst of all his sem- ing in the cold light of speculation. He blances, and all his delusions, to have been walks in the feeble sparks of his own kinequally destitute of the faith which justifies. dling. Were it fire from the sanctuary, it And it is, perhaps, not so difficult to stir would impart, to his unregenerated bosom, up in the mind of the learned controver- of the heat, and spirit, and love of the sancsialist, and the deeply-exercised scholar, the tuary. This is the sure result of the faith suspicion, that with all his acquirements that is unfeigned-and all that a feigned in the lore of theology, he is, in respect of faith can possibly make out, will be a fictiits personal influence upon himself, still in tious title deed, which will not stand before a state of moral and spiritual unsoundness, the light of the great day of final examinait is not so difficult to raise this feeling of tion. And thus will it be found, I fear, in self-condemnation in his mind, as it is to do many cases of marked and ostentatious proit in the mind of him who has selected his fessorship, how possible a thing it is to one favourite article, and there, resolved, if have an appearance of the kingdom of God die he must, to die hard, has taken up his in word, and the kingdom of God in letter, obstinate and immoveable position-and and the kingdom of God in controversyretiring within the intrenchment of a few while the kingdom of God is not in power. verses of the Bible, will defy all the truth But once more---instead of laying a false and all the thunder of its remaining decla- security upon one article, it is possible to rations; and with an orthodoxy which car- have a mind familiarized to all the articles ries on all its play in his head, without one---to admit the need of holiness, and to moving or one softening touch upon his demonstrate the channel of influence by heart, will stand out to the eye of the world, which it is brought down from heaven both in avowed principle, and in its corres-upon the hearts of believers--to cast an eye ponding practice, a secure, sturdy, firm, of intelligence over the whole symphony impregnable Antinomian. He thinks that he will have heaven, because he has faith. But if his faith do not bring the virtues of heaven into his heart, it will never spread either the glory or the security of heaven around his person. The region to which he vainly thinks of looking forward, is a region of spirituality; and he himself must be spiritualized, ere it can prove to him a region of enjoyment. If he count on a different paradise from this, he is as widely mistaken as they who dream of the luxury that awaits them in the paradise of Mahomet. He misinterprets the whole undertaking of Jesus Christ. He degrades the salvation which He hath achieved, into a salvation from animal pain. He transforms the heaven which He has opened into a heaven of animal gratifications. He forgets, that on the great errand of man's restoration, it is not more necessary to recal our departed species to the heaven from which they had wandered, than it is to recal to the bosom of man its departed worth,

and extent of Christian doctrine---to lay bare those ligaments of connection by which a true faith in the mind is ever sure to bring a new spirit and a new practice along with it: and to hold up the lights both of Scripture and of experience, over the whole process of man's regeneration. It is possible for one to do all this--and yet to have no part in that regeneration--to declare with ability and effect the Gospel to others, and yet himself be cast away---to unravel the whole of that spiritual mechanism, by which a sinner is transformed into a saint, while he does not exemplify that mechanism upon his own person---to explain what must be done, what must be undergone in the process of becoming one of the children of the kingdom, while he remains one of the children of this world. To him the kingdom of God hath come in word, and it hath come in letter, and it hath come in natural discernment; but it hath not come in power. He may have profoundly studied the whole doctrine of

the kingdom--and have conceived the va- from his physician. The unhappy patient rious ideas of which it is composed---and was advised to attend the performances of have embodied them in words-and have a comedian, who had put all the world in poured them forth in utterance--and yet ecstacies. But it turned out, that the patient be as little spiritualized by these manifold was the comedian himself-and that while operations, as the air is spiritualized by its his smile was the signal of merriment to all, being the avenue for the sounds of his his heart stood uncheered and motionless, voice to the ears of his listening auditory. amid the gratulations of an applauding The living man may, with all the force of theatre-and evening after evening, did he his active intelligence, be a mere vehicle of kindle around him a rapture in which he transmission. The Holy Ghost may leave could not participate-a poor, helpless, dethe message to take its own way through jected mourner, among the tumults of that his mind---and may refuse the accession of high-sounding gaiety, which he himself had his influence, till it make its escape from created. the lips of the preacher---and may trust for Let all this touch our breasts with the its conveyance to those aerial undulations persuasion of the nothingness of man. Let by which the report is carried forward to it lead us to withdraw our confidence from an assembled multitude---and may only, the mere instrument, and to carry it upafter the entrance of hearing has been ef- wards to him who alone worketh all in all. fected for the terms of the message, may Let it reconcile us to the arrangements of only, after the unaided powers of moral his providence, and assure our minds, that and physical nature have brought the mat- he can do with one arrangement, what we ter thus far, may then, and not till then, fondly anticipated from another. Let us add his own influence to the truths of the cease to be violently affected by the mutamessage, and send them with this impreg- bilities of a fleeting and a shifting world— nation from the ear to the conscience of and let nothing be suffered the power of any whom he listeth. And thus from the dissolving for an instant, that connection of workings of a cold and desolate bosom in trust which should ever subsist between our the human expounder, may there proceed minds and the will of the all-working Deity. a voice which on its way to some of those Above all, let us carefully separate between who are assembled around him, shall turn our liking for certain accompaniments of out to be a voice of urgency and power. the word, and our liking for the word itHe may be the instrument of blessings to self. Let us be jealous of those human preothers, which have never come with kindly ferences which may bespeak some human or effective influence upon his own heart. and adventitious influence upon our hearts, He may inspire an energy, which he does and be altogether different from the influnot feel, and pour a comfort into the ence of Christian truth upon Christianized wounded spirit, the taste of which, and the and sanctified affections. Let us be tenaenjoyment of which is not permitted to his cious only of one thing-not of holding by own--and nothing can serve more effec- particular ministers-not of saying, that "I tually than this experimental fact to hum-am Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos"-not of ble him, and to demonstrate the existence of a power which cannot be wielded by all the energies of Nature--a power often refused to eloquence, often refused to the might and the glory of human wisdom--often refused to the most strenuous exertions of human might and human talent, and generally met with in richest abundance among the ministrations of the men of simplicity and prayer.

Some of you have heard of the individual, who, under an oppression of the severest melancholy, implored relief and counsel.

idolizing the servant, while the Master is forgotten,-but let us hold by the Head, even Christ. He is the source of all spiritual influence—and while the agents whom he employs, can do no more than bring the kingdom of God to you in word-it lies with him either to exalt one agency, or to humble and depress another-and either with or without such an agency, by the demonstration of that Spirit, which is given unto faith, to make the kingdom of God come into your hearts with power.

SERMON IX.

On the Reasonableness of Faith.

**But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed."-Galatians iii. 23.

and of mercy laid before us in the New Testament.

But this is not the only example of that peculiar way in which St. Paul has managed his discussions with the enemies of the faith. He carried the principle of being all things to all men into his very reasonings. He had Gentiles as well as, Jews to contend with; and he often made some sentiment or conviction of their own, the starting point of his argument. In this same epistle to the Romans, he pleaded with the Gentiles the acknowledged law of nature and of conscience. In his speech to the men of Athens, he dated his argument from a point in their own superstition. In this way he drew converts both from the ranks of Judaism, and the ranks of idolatry; and whether it was the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, or the school of poetry and philosophy in countries of refinement, that he had to contend with, his accomplished mind was never at a loss for principles by which he bore down the hostility of his adversaries, and shut them up unto the faith.

"SHUT up unto the faith." This is the expression which we fix upon as the subject of our present discourse-and to let you more effectually into the meaning of it, it may be right to state, that in the preceding clause "kept under the law," the term kept, is, in the original Greek, derived from a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception is altogether military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one-and that one leads those who are compelled to take it to the faith of the Gospel. They are shut up to this faith as their only alternativelike an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general, to take up the only position in which they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only town in which they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to have been a favourite style of argument with Pata, and the way in which he often carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies of his master's cause. It forms the basis of that masterly and decisive train of reasoning, which we have in his epistle to the Romans. By the operation But there is a fashion in philosophy as well of a skilful tactics, he, (if we may be al-as in other things. In the course of centulowed the expression) manœuvred them, and shut them up to the faith of the Gospel. It gave prodigious effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, as he often does, upon their own principles, and turned them into instruments of conviction against themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew. He made a full concession to them of the leading principles of Judaism-and this gave him possession of the vantage ground upon which these principles stood. He made use of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge laid before them in the Gospel. He led them to Christ by a school-master which they could not refuse-and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was a very short one. "Cursed be he that continueth not in all the words of this law to do them." But, in point of fact, they had not done them. To them belonged the curse of the violated law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. They found the faith and the free offer of the Gospel to be the only avenue open to receive them. They were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left them no other outlet but the free act of grace

ries, new schools are formed, and the old, with all their doctrines, and all their plausibilities, sink into oblivion. The restless appetite of the human mind for speculation, must have novelties to feed upon-and after the countless fluctuations of two thousand years, the age in which we live has its own taste, and its own style of sentiment to characterize it. If Paul, vested with a new apostolical commission, were to make his appearance amongst us, we should like to know how he would shape his argument to the reigning taste and philosophy of the times. We should like to confront him with the literati of the day, and hear him lift his intrepid voice in our halls and colleges. In his speech to the men of Athens, he refers to certain of their own poets. We should like to hear his reference to the poetry and the publications of modern Europe-and while the science of this cultivated age stood to listen in all the pride of academic dignity, we should like to know the arguments of him who was determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

But all this is little better than the indulgence of a dream. St. Paul has already fought the good fight, and his course is finished. The battles of the faith are now