SUBJECT:-Defective Reformation.

I. THAT A DEFECTIVE REFORMATION CONSISTS RATHER IN THE DISPOSSESSION OF

SOMETHING WRONG THAN IN THE

IMPORTATION OF WHAT IS RIGHT. "The unclean spirit is gone out" of the man, and there is a visible improvement. The house is swept of its filth, and garnished with many ornaments; but this is all. An evil spirit is gone from the man, but no good spirit has come in its place. Where is the heavenly occupant for whom the house was originally built ?-the spirit of love for eternal truth and goodness; where is it? This man represents a reformation by no means uncommon. We find evil spirits leaving men, but no good spirits taking up their place. (1) The "unclean spirit" of barbarism may go out from man. People that were once gross, loathsome, and savage-the mere creatures of brute instinct become enlightened in intellect, prolific in invention, and refined in manners. Civilization sweeps the house of social impurities, garnishes it with outward moralities and artistic beauties, but it is still "empty" so far as moral worth is concerned. To be able to read Homer, and to trace the logical steps of Euclid; to travel by steam, and make electricity convey our thoughts; to maintain outward order by laws, and make machinery save our muscles and our limbs ; are advantages which accrue to the civilized world by the expulsion of the old barbaric spirit. But let us not overrate these; they are not virtues; they co-exist with a morally empty soul. Perhaps the civilized world is morally as "wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” as many parts of uncultured heathen-land. (2) The "unclean spirit" of a false theology may go out from man; a country may renounce Polytheism, or Islamism, or Popery; and a correct theoretic system of faith may sweep the house of all idolatries, sacerdotalties, and such like abominations, and garnish it with the forms of Christian theism; and the house may still be "empty" in a moral sense. Of what advantage to the moral soul of man is nominal Protestantism compared

with Popery, or nominal Christianity compared with heathenism? (3) The "unclean spirit" of intemperance and profanity may go out from man. The drunkard may be so impressed with the evils of intemperance that he may banish the demon, and sweep his house of the disgusting habits of intoxication, and garnish himself with the forms of sobriety; and the profane man may abandon his blasphemous language, cease to desecrate the ordinances of Heaven, sweep his house of all odious irreverences, and garnish it with the forms of piety; and yet, in both cases, the house may be left empty, entirely unoccupied with any virtuous and religious emotions.

Such are the spurious and defective reformations. They are of no real service to man as an offspring of God, a citizen of the universe, a candidate for eternity. Let a man put away all mere intellectual and outward evil from him; let every demon of error and habit depart; let his conversation and conduct be swept of all that could offend the eye of the most refined spectator; nay, let him be garnished with such external attributes as would command the esteem, and even admiration, of society; still if the "house" be "empty"-if the "Spirit of Christ" is not in it-his reformation is radically defective and morally worthless. All his outward excellences are but as flowers about a corpse, serving to hide a little the hideous, and to relieve the noisome from the spectator, but leaving to death his undisputed sway. In true reformation the evil spirit goes out, because the spirit of goodness has entered. The new life infused expels the old spirit; and the man throws off the old, as trees throw off their foliage, by the rising force of a new life. True reformation is like the moulting of the "fowls of heaven:" the old feathers give way to a lovelier plumage by the inward working of a fresh supply of vital force.

The picture suggests

II. THAT SUCH A DEFECTIVE REFORMATION IS NO GUARAN"I will return to my

TEE AGAINST FUTURE DEGENERACY.

house from whence I came out," &c.

There are four cir

cumstances suggested which will render the subject of this defective reformation liable to a fearful relapse :-First. The moral emptiness of the soul. The soul was left unoccupied; there was nothing there to guard its rights, interest its sympathies, or engage its powers. The true spirit was not there to "lift up a standard" against the enemy. An empty mind -a mind without a great affection, thought, and purposewill always be assailable by the enemy, at every point. There is but one thing in the universe that can fill up a soul, and that is supreme love to God. This will so occupy it as to allow no place for aught besides. This affection, like fire, consumes everything opposed to its own nature, and transmutes all into its own essence. It acts as the great Redeemer acted in the Temple of old-expels all those buyers and sellers who desecrate the holy place. Another thing suggested, which renders the subject of this defective reformation liable to relapse, is, secondly, the constant restlessness of evil. This unclean spirit is represented as "walking through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none." There is no repose in

evil. It is like the troubled sea: the mind under its influence is never at rest, nor ever can be. An ejected spirit, like the wild beast disappointed of its prey, prowls about the creation with heightened appetite and quickened speed. Satan is represented as a roaring lion; as going up and down the earth; as the enemy, who steals clandestinely into the fields, scatters tares, and thus frustrates the plans and blights the prospects of the moral husbandman. Another thing suggested, which renders the subject of this defective reformation liable to a relapse is, thirdly, the disposedness of the spirit to it. The unclean spirit, on its return, instead of finding the house bolted and barred, found it "swept and garnished" as if awaiting his return. Partial reformations always have their reactions. The man who abandons any vice to which he has been addicted, from pride, fear, expediency, or any other motive not virtuous in itself, is only preparing his heart for the return of the evil spirit. Any change accomplished from any motive save love to God, is but the giving up of one sin for another;

is but one evil spirit casting out another. Fourthly. There is yet another thing suggested which renders the subject of this defective reformation liable to a relapse, and that is, thirdly, the vast resources of evil. "Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself." The agents of evil in this world are far more numerous than those of virtue. The restless spirit of evil can always muster not merely "seven," but seven thousand, emissaries to help, it in its work. Whilst virtue, on this planet, has but its units, vice has its millions.

III. THAT THE DEGENERACY WHICH FOLLOWS SUCH A

REFORMATION LEAVES THE SUBJECT IN A WORSE CONDITION

THAN EVER. "And the last state of that man is worse than the first." First. His guilt is augmented; secondly, his susceptibility to holy motives is deadened; thirdly, the obstructions to a thorough change are increased.

This subject brings out several valuable thoughts to view. Does it not present a true test of character? It shows that moral worth is not in negatives, but positives; not in the abdication of vices, but in the cultivation of virtues; not in the mere ejection of a bad spirit, but in the reception of the good. True worth is the good expelling the bad, and filling up the soul. Does it not also present a true explanation of apostacy? What is technically called "falling from grace," seems to me nothing more than a soul that had once swept itself of some vices, and appeared clean for a time, receiving back others in its place: it is the reaction of a temporary dormant evil, not the extinction of positive good. Does it not, moreover, present the true method of reformation? What instrument can effect a true reformation in man? Manifestly that only which can infuse into the soul a new dispositionfill it with love to God, the very spirit of all goodness. There is but one power in society, one instrument in the world, that historically has done this, or that philosophically ever can do this, and that is CHRISTIANITY.

Analysis of Homily the Sixty-fourth.

"Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," &c.-Matt. xxvi. 36-46.

THE public life of Christ has ended now; he bids the world adieu, and retires. For upwards of three years he was seen performing stupendous miracles, and heard proclaiming transcendent truths, in the great theatre of public life. All eyes were on him, all minds were occupied with stirring thoughts, which he, by his wondrous deeds and more wondrous doctrines, had waked up; but now he withdraws into a little garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives, a short distance to the south of the Holy City. There, amidst the quiet trees, overshadowed by the silent hills, with the pale beams of the full moon falling coldly on his brow, he retires to solitary anguish, and to private prayer. Mysterious are the sufferings which come upon him in this quiet retreat: it is "the hour of darkness" in his soul. Awful were the spiritual convulsions and battlings of this hour! What interests depended on it? God knows, and coming ages will reveal.

The agonies he now endured were mental. The mind, by its abstractions, creations, and anticipations, has the power to raise itself above the consciousness of physical pain: hence the martyr has sung joyously at the stake. But what can sustain a wounded spirit? There is no faculty to bear us above mental anguish. Man can flee from it no more than from himself; it surrounds his being like the circumambient air, which he must breathe or die. And these mental sufferings of Christ were the sufferings of innocence. The burnings of envy and revenge, the distractions of avarice, the disappointments of ambition, the recollection of past mis