image of the Saviour, it is by the energy of Paul urging upon the people of the ship of the same predestinating God, whose good the immediate adoption of the only way by pleasure it is to give unto us the kingdom which their lives could be saved, and the prepared for us before the foundation of situation of an ordinary minister urging it the world. upon the people of his church, to take to that way of faith and repentance, by which alone they can save their souls from the wrath that is now abiding on them. Paul did know that the people were certainly to escape with their lives, and that did not prevent him from pressing upon them the measures which they ought to adopt for their preservation. Even, then, though a minister did know those of his people whose names are written in the book of life, that ought not to hinder him from pressing it upon them to lay hold of eternal life-to lay up their treasure in heaven Thus it is that some are elected to everlasting life. This is an obvious doctrine of Scripture. The Bible brings it forward, and it is not for us, the interpreters of the Bible, to keep it back from you. God could, if it pleased him, read out, at this moment, the names of those in this congregation, who are ordained to eternal life, and are written in his book. In reference to their deliverance from shipwreck, he enabled Paul to say of the whole ship's company, that they were to be saved. In reference to your deliverance from wrath and from punishment, he could reveal to us the--to labour for the meat that endureth--to names of the elect among you, and enable us to say of them that they are certainly to be saved. follow after that holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord--to be strong in the faith, and such a faith too as availeth, even faith which worketh by love, and of which we may say, even those whom we assuredly know to be the chosen heirs of immortality, that unless this faith abideth in them, they shall not be saved. But it so happens, that we do not know who are, and who are not, the children of election. This is a secret thing belonging to God, and which is not imparted to us; still it would be our part to say to those of whose final salvation we were assured, believe the Gospel, or you shall not be saved-repent, or you shall not be saved-purify yourselves, even as God is pure, or you shall not be saved. But we are not in possession of the secret-and how much more then does it lie upon us to ply with earnestness the fears and the consciences of our hearers, by those revealed things which God hath been pleas But again, the same God who ordains the end, ordains also the means which go before it. In virtue of the end being ordained and made known to him, Paul could say that all the men's lives were to be saved. And in virtue of the means being ordained and made known to him, he could also say, that unless the sailors abode in the ship, they should not be saved. In the same manner, if the ordained end were made known to us, we could, perhaps, say of some individual among you, that you are certainly to be saved. And if the ordained means were made known to us, we could say, that unless you are rendered meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, you shall not be saved. Now, the ordination of the end, God has not been pleased to reveal to us. He has not told us who among you are to be saved, as he told Paul of the de-ed to make known to us? What! if Paul, liverance of his ship's company. This is one of the secret things which belong to him, and we dare not meddle with it. But he has told us about the ordained means, and we know, through the medium of the Bible, that unless you do such and such things, you shall not be saved. This is one of the revealed things which belong to us, and with as great truth and practical urgency as Paul made use of, when he said The predestination of God respecting the to the centurion and soldiers, that unless final escape of Paul and his fellow-travelthese men abide in the ship ye shall not be lers from shipwreck, though made known saved, do we say to one and to all of you, to the Apostle, did not betray him into the unless ye repent ye shall not be saved-un-indolence which is ascribed, and falsely less ye do works meet for repentance, ye ascribed, to the belief of this doctrine; nor shall not be saved-unless ye believe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, ye shall not be saved-unless ye are born again, ye shall not be saved-unless the deeds done in your body be good deeds, and ye bring forth those fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God, ye shall not be saved. though assured by an angel from heaven of the final deliverance of this ship's company, still persists in telling them, that if they leave certain things undone, their deliverance will be impossible-shall we, utterly in the dark about the final state of a single hearer we are addressing, let down for a single instant the practical urgency of the New Testament? did it restrain him from spiriting on the people to the most strenuous and fatiguing exertions. And shall we, who only know in general that God does predestinate, but cannot carry it home with assurance to a single individual, convert this doctrine into a plea of indolence and security? Even should we see the mark of God upon their Mark the difference between the situation | foreheads, it would be our duty to labour can them with the necessity of doing those | ness upon the business of doing. things, which, if left undone, will exclude give you no assurance of its being from the kingdom of God. But, we make cree of God, that any of you shall be saved. no such pretensions. We see no mark upon But we can give you the assurance, that any of your foreheads. We possess no you will be saved, if you do such and such more than the Bible, and access through things. Surely, if the people whom Paul the Mediator to him, who, by his Spirit, can addressed, did not feel themselves exemptopen our understandings to understand it. ed by their knowledge of God's decree, The revealed things which we find there from practically entering upon those meabelong to us, and we press them upon you sures which carried forward its accom-"Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise plishment, you, who have no such knowperish." "If ye believe not in the Son of ledge, must feel doubly impelled by the unGod, the wrath of God abideth on you." certainty which hangs over you, to the work "Be not deceived, neither covetous, nor of making your calling and your election thieves, nor extortioners, nor drunkards, sure. You know in general, that predesshall inherit the kingdom of God." "He tination is a doctrine of the Bible, but there who forsaketh not all, shall not be a disci- is not one of you who can say of himself, ple of Christ." "The fearful, and the un- that God has made known his decrees to believing, and the abominable, and all liars me, and given me directly to understand, shall have their part in the lake which burn- that I am the object of a blessed predestieth with fire and brimstone." These are nation. This is one point of which you plain declarations, and apart from the doc-know nothing; but there is another point trine of predestination altogether, they of which you know something-and that is, ought, and if they are believed and listened if I believe, if I repent, if I be made like to, they will have a practical influence upon unto Christ, if I obtain the Holy Spirit to you. We call upon you not to resist this work in me a conformity to his image-and influence, but to cherish it. If any of you I am told, that I shall obtain it if I ask it— are the children of election, it is by the then by this I become an heir of life, and right influence of revealed things upon your the decree of which I know nothing at the understandings and your consciences, that outset of my concern about salvation, will this secret thing will be brought to pass. become more and more apparent to me as Paul said as much to the centurion and the I advance in a meetness for heaven, and soldiers, as that if you do the things, I call will, at length, become fully, and finally, upon you to do, you will certainly be saved. and conclusively made known by its acThey did what he bade them, and the de- complishment. I may suffer my curiosity cree of God respecting their deliverance to expatiate on the question, "Am I, or am from shipwreck, a decree which Paul had I not, of the election of God?" But my the previous knowledge of, was accom- wisdom tells me that this is not the busiplished. We also feel ourselves warrantedness on hand. It is not the matter which to say to one and to all of you, "Believe I am called on to do with at present. After in the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved." "Repent and be converted, and your sins shall be forgiven you." Return unto God, and he will be reconciled. If you do as we bid you, God's decree respecting your deliverance from hell, a decree which we have not the previous knowledge of, will be made known by its accomplishment. Paul said to his companions, that it was quite indispensable to their safety that the sailors should be kept in the vessel, what did the centurion and his men do? Did they fall a speculating about the decrees? Did they hug themselves in the confidence, that as their safety was a point sure and determined upon, they need to take no trouble at all in the concern? O no! No Again, we call upon you, our hearers, to sooner did Paul give the word, than they compare your situation with that of the acted upon it. They gave themselves up centurion and the soldiers. They were with all the promptitude of men whose told by a prophet that they were to be lives were at stake, to the business on hand. saved, and when that prophet told them They cut the ropes-they let go the boat— what they were to do for the purpose of they kept in the sailors-and from the very saving themselves, they obeyed him. They first moment of Paul's address to them on did not say, “O it is all predestinated, and the subject, all was bustling, and strenuous, we may give up our anxieties and do no- and unremitting activity; till, by the unthing." They were just as strenuous and wearied perseverance of those living and active, as if there had been no predestina- operative instruments, the decree of God tion in the matter. Paul's previous assur- was accomplished. Now, they were much rance, that all was to end well, had no effect better acquainted with the decree which in lulling them to indolence. It did end respected them, than you are with the well, not however without their exertions, decree respecting you. They had the bebut by their exertions. How much more forehand knowledge of it, and will you be does it lie upon you to enter with earnest-less active, or less strenuous, than they? XI.] ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. Do, therefore, betake yourselves to the bu- on which the deliverance of Paul's comsiness on hand. Let our exhortations to pany from shipwreck was suspended. Who embrace the free offer of the Gospel-to knows but the urgency we now ply you rely on Christ as your Saviour-to resolve with, telling upon you, and carrying your against all your iniquities, and turn unto purposes along with it, may be the very him-to ply the throne of grace for the step in the wonderful progress of God's strengthening influence of the Spirit, by operations, on which your conversion hinwhich alone you are enabled to die unto ges? We, therefore, press the Gospel with all sin, and live unto all righteousness-let all its duties, and all its promises, and all its this have an immediate, and a stirring, and privileges upon you. O listen, and resolve, a practical influence upon you. If you put and, manfully forsaking all that keeps you this influence away from you, you are in a from the Saviour, we call upon yoù, from direct way now of proving what we tremble this moment, to give yourselves up unto to think may be rendered clear and indis- him; and be assured, it is only by acting in putable at last, on the great day of the re-obedience to such calls laid before you in velation of hidden things, that you have the Bible, and sounded in your ear from the neither part nor lot in the matter. Whatever pulpit, that your election unto life can ever the employment be which takes you up, be made known in this world, or reach its and hinders you from entering immediately positive consummation in eternity. on the work of faith and repentance, it is an alarming symptom of your soul, that you are so taken up-and should the employment be an idle dreaming, and amusing of yourselves with the decrees and counsels of heaven, it is not the less alarming. And now you can have no difficulty in understanding how it is that we make our calling and our election sure. It is not in the power of the elect to make their election surer in itself than it really is; for this is a sureness which is not capable of receiving any addition. It is not in the power of the elect to make it surer to God-for all futurity is submitted to his all-seeing eye, and his absolute knowledge stands in need of no confirmation. But there is such a thing as the elect being ignorant for a time of their own election, and their being made sure of it in the progress of evidence and discovery. And therefore it is that they are called to make their election sure to themselves, or to make themselves sure of their election. And how is this to be done? Not by reading it in the book of God's decrees-not by obtaining from him any direct information about his counsels-not by conferring with prophet or angel, gifted with the revelation of hidden things. But the same God who elects some unto everlasting life, and keeps back from them all direct information about it, tells them that he who believeth, and he who repenteth, and he who obeyeth the Gospel, shall obtain everlasting life. We shall never in this world have an immediate communication from him, whether we are of the elect or not-but let us believe-let us repent-let us obey the Saviour, and from the first moment of our setting ourselves to these things in good earnest, we may conceive the hope of a place among the heirs of immortality. In the progress and success As we grow of our endeavours, this hope may advance and grow brighter within us. Some will spend their time in inquiries about the number of the saved, when they ought to be striving for themselves, that they might obtain an entrance into the strait gate; and some will waste those precious moments in speculating about the secrets of the book of life, which they should fill up by supporting themselves, and making progress through the narrowness of the way that leads to it. The plain business we lay upon you, is to put away from you the evil of your doings-to submit yourselves to Christ as he is offered to you-to fly to his atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of your offences-to place yourselves under the guidance of his word, and a dependence on the influences of his Spirit-to live no longer to yourselves, but to him—and to fill up your weeks and your days with those fruits of righteousness, by which God is glorified. We stand here by the decree of heaven, and it is by the same decree that you are now sitting round and listening to us. We feel the importance of the situation we occupy; and though we believe in the sovereignty of God, and the unfailingness of all his appointments, this, instead of restraining, impels us to bring the message of the Gospel, with all the practical urgency of its invitations, and its warnings, to bear upon you. We feel, with all our belief in predestination, that our business is not to forbear this urgency, but to ply you with it most anxi- in the exercises of faith and obedience, the ously, and earnestly, and unceasingly; and light of a cheering manifestation is more you should feel, with the same belief in your sensibly felt, and our hope ripens into as"Hereby do we know that we mind, that your business is not to resist this surance. urgency, but to be guided by its impulse. know him, by our keeping his commandWho knows but we may be the humble in- ments," is an evidence which every year strument, and you the undeserved subjects becomes clearer and more encouraging; and of some high and heavenly ordination? The thus, by a well-sustained perseverance in cutting of the ropes was the turning point the exercises of the Christian life, do we 3 K labour with all diligence to make our calling and election sure. We call upon you, in the language of the Apostle, to have faith, and to this faith add virtue, and knowledge, and temperance, and patience, and godliness, and brotherly kindness, and charity. It is by the doing of these things, that you are made sure of your calling and election, "for if ye do these things," says Peter, "ye shall never fail, and an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Lord God merciful and gracious-to call you to the service of Christ, that great Master of the household of faith-to urge it upon you, that you must renounce every other master, and, casting all your idols, and vanities, and iniquities away from you, to close with the invitation, and be diligent in all the duties and performances of the Gospel. If you resist, or put off—if, blind to the goodness of God in Christ Jesus, you suffer it not to lead you to repentance-if the call of "awake to righteousness, and sin not," make no practical impression on you sins of the past, do not fill your heart with the desire of sanctification for the futureif the word of Christ be not so received by you as to lead to the doing of it-then you are just leaving undone those things, of which we say in the words of the text, "Except these things be done, ye cannot be saved"-and to all the guilt of your past disobedience, you add the aggravation of putting away from you both the offered atonement and the commanded repentance of the Gospel, and "how can you escape if you neglect so great a salvation?" If there be any of you who have not fol--if the true assurance of pardon for the lowed this train of observation-if it still remain one of those things of Paul which are hard to be understood-let us beseech you, at least, that you wrest it not to your own destruction, by remitting your activity, and your diligence, and your pains-taking in the service of Christ. Why, the doctrine of election leaves our duty to exhort, and your duty to obey, on the same footing on which it found them. We are commissioned to lay before you the free offer of the Gospel-to press it on the acceptance of one and all of you-to assure every individual amongst you of a hearty welcome from the SERMON XII. On the Nature of the Sin against the Holy Ghost. "Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."-Matthew xii. 31, 32. LET us never suspend the practical in- | fluence of what we do know, by idly rambling in a vain and impertinent pursuit after what we do not know. Thus much we know from the Bible, that God refuses not his Holy Spirit to them who ask it-that every right movement of principle within us is from him-that when we feel an impulse of conscience, we feel the Spirit of God knocking at the door of our hearts, and challenging from us that attention and that obedience which are due to the great Lawgiver that if we follow not the impulse, we provoke and dissatisfy him who is the Author of it--and that there is such a thing as tempting him to abandon us altogether, and to surrender the friendly office of plying us any longer with his admonitions and his warnings. Hence, an emphatic argument for immediate repentance. By every moment of delay, we hasten upon ourselves the awful crisis of being let alone. The conscience is every day getting harder; and he who sits behind, and is the unseen Author of all its instigations, is lifting every day a feebler voice; and coming always nearer and nearer to that point in the history of every determined sinner, when, left to his own infatuation, he can hold up a stubborn and unyielding front to all that instrumentality of advice and of expostulation which is brought to bear upon him. The preacher plies him with his weekly voice, but the Spirit refuses to lend it his constraining energy; and all that is tender, and all that is terrifying in his Sabbath argument plays around his heart, without reaching it. The judgments of God go abroad against him, and as he carries his friends or his children to the grave, a few natural tears may bear witness to the tenderness he bore thembut that Spirit who gives to these judgments all their moral significancy, withholds from him the anointing which remaineth, and the man relapses as before into all the obstinate habits, and all the uncrucified affections which he has hitherto indulged in. The disease gathers upon him, and gets a more rooted inveteracy than ever; and thus it is, that there are thousands and thousands XII.] ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. more, who, though active and astir on that living scene of population which is around us, have an iron hardness upon their souls, which makes them, in reference to the things of God, dark and sullen as the grave, and fast locks them in all the insensibility of spiritual death. Is there no old man of your acquaintance, who realizes this sad picture of one left to himself that we have now attempted so rapidly to set before you? Then know, that by every deed of wilful sin, that by every moment of wilful delay in the great matter of repentance, that by every stifled warning of conscience, that by every deafening of its authoritative voice among the temptations of the world, and the riot of lawless acquaintances, you are just moving yourself to the limits of this helpless and irrecoverable condition. We have no doubt, that you may have the intention of making a violent step, and suddenly turning round to the right path ere you die. But this you will not do but by an act of obedience to the reproaches of a conscience that is ever getting harder. This you will not do without the constraining influence of that Spirit, who is gradually dying away from you. This you will not do but in virtue of some overpowering persuasion from that monitor who is now stirring within you, but with whom you are now taking the most effectual method of drowning his voice, and disarming him of all his authority. Do not you perceive, that in these circumstances, every act of delay is madness-that you are getting by every hour of it into deeper water-that you are consolidating a barrier against your future return to the paths of righteousness, which you vainly think you will be able to surmount when the languor and infirmity of old age have got hold of you-that you are strengthening and multiplying around you the wiles of an entanglement, which all the strugglings of deathbed terror cannot break asunder-that you are insulting the Spirit of God by this daily habit of stifling and neglecting the other and the other call that he is sounding to your moral ear, through the organ of conscience. And O the desperate hazard and folly of such a calculation! Think you, think you, that this is the way of gaining his friendly presence at that awful moment, when the urgent sense of guilt and of danger forces from the sinner an imploring cry as he stands on the brink of eternity? "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their seorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn ye at my reproof. Behold I will pour out my spirit unto you; I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear You see, then, how a man may shut |