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No threatenings of vengeance, unworthy a God of Love, proceed from his lips. We persuade men. No terrific descriptions, the creatures of a distempered mind, are heard. For we persuade men. The truth as it is in Jesus, is proclaimed to the children of men. The glories of another and a better world, are presented, and the eloquence of truth, warmed into the power of love, is heard, in persuasion, to shun the way of destruction, the path that leads to death; and to walk in the ways of wisdom, because her ways are pleasant; and to choose her paths, for in them is peace.

We persuade men. How reasonable, too, is persuasion! Reader, did some sudden exigence in your affairs, of pressing necessity, make the helping hand of a willing friend indispensable to your well-being, and should you call for help from your friend, requesting him to interpose his aid, and save you from, threatened pecuniary ruin, you would try and persuade him. If he did not at first comprehend your statement, and understand the consequences so fatal to your peace, you would explain by a careful and particular detail, the disastrous result that awaited your affairs, if you should fail in obtaining the requisite assistance. And on the other hand, you would represent in glowing colors, the good, the blessing that would crown your exertions, if the helping hand of a kind friend was generously extended to meet your pressing wants, and ward off the threatened ruin. You would persuade your friend; you would not threaten him. You would be anxious to rouse his better feelings, and awaken in his bosom, a kind and tender regard for your welfare; and this is persuasion.

How powerful are the motives presented by Paul, compared to all the inducements that this world can furnish, to

metonymically; viz; putting that which causes fear, in the place of the fear. The idea, correctly expressed, amounts to this, as if Paul had said, Knowing the consequences, in the final event, of rejecting, spurning the Gospel of Christ, to be a virtual rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the part of the sinner, the decision of the Lord Jesus Christ, in that event, must be such as to be contemplated with fear. Therefore, Paul knowing this, by a metonymy, represents the terror, that which causes the fear, to be of Christ the Judge; when in fact, it is of the sinner's rejection of Christ, or the sinner's sins. For the law of the Spirit of life in Paul, is the medium of his joy; and the law of sin and death in the sinner that rejects Christ, is the medium of his alarm. There is, therefore, as much cause of alarm as of joy; i. e. considered in the sense of a positive cause existing for both.

persuade men to consider their latter end! To use the world as not abusing it, because the fashion thereof is passing away. To awake from the sleep of error-to rise above the besetting sin of this world's delusion, and listen to the still small voice of truth.

What persuasives do death and destruction-death unto death the suffering of the present scene, buffeted by the mad arm of opposition, in the fruitless expectation of uncertain good, present, to compensate for the sacrifice of all that reason sanctions, hope inspires, the word of truth can offer, or that faith promises as the boon of him who receives with reverence the truths of Heaven? What are these, when the tabernacle shall fall into dissolution, and the bankrupt soul go, a houseless, homeless beggar, to the gloom of the long blank night of Hades!

To the believer, to those who have escaped from the thraldom of sin; to those, whose blind eyes have been opened; to all who have received the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; and are thereby made free from the law of sin and death, the persuasives of the Gospel come and urge them to zeal in their Master's service. Therefore to you, is the word of exhortation:

Do you see the cause of the misery around you? Are you in possession of a recipe which can alleviate? Have you an antidote that will cure? Nay, more, have you been afflicted? have you experienced the misery of the disease, and rejoiced in the blessing of a healthful recovery ? Can you, then, be indifferent to the fate of others? Have you forgotten the pain of uncertainty-the sickness of hope deferred-the fear of disappointment-the indescribable torment nursed by anxiety, and nourished by unbelief that state, which dares not hope, and hates, yet has to fear-whose expectation was gendered in darkness, the fruit of mistake, and the victim of despair ;when clouds black as hell brooded over futurity, and gloomy horror steeped the soul in terror-when no response breathed to quell the solicitude of immortal longings, but all was silent as death, dark as the grave, and cruel as uncertainty ?

What circumstance of time, or place, can obliterate from your memories, the radiance of that morning, whose dawn chased away the clouds! The bright effulgence of whose Sun, bursting upon the soul, dispelled the night of death, "and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel!"

What can efface from your minds the meridian glory of that faith, which, by anticipation, leaps the barrier of time-unravels the mysteries of eternity-and rests, with hope and charity, on scenes yet to be revealed; when all things shall be subdued, and God be all in all!-when love shall pervade every heart-devotion fill every soul—and rapture tune every tongue! When sin, death, and hell, shall be buried in the grave of annihilation, and their remembrance lost in the splendours, the glories, and the triumphs of eternity! At the recollection of these, a recollection surpassing the powers of description to portray-a recollection, when every faculty of the soul is roused, and with undivided voice proclaims, "That neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our LORD."

AMEN.

SERMON XIII.`

THE SINNER IN DANGER.

"Lord, save us; we perish." Matt. viii. 25.

SALVATION has been the theme of all that name the name of Jesus. From the Roman pope to the protestant Calvin, and the more modern Hopkins, and with all the various sects of Christendom, salvation has been the theme. Even among those nations where the gloom of Heathenism covered the people, like an impenetrable vail, for ages, before the Scriptures were promulgated, and life and truth appeared in the person of God's Son; salvation, in the sense of a mean of escape from foreboded evil, was heard; and superstition made a creed for man. Man has searched for something to hang a hope upon. The feeling of insecurity, the imaginings of superstition, the conjectures of ignorance, the fears of the timid, the chicanery of the designing, the policy of rulers, and that indescribable monitor that nestles in the human bosom, and whispers of good and evil to man, all combined; and man built an altar, and immolated his victim, and bowed his head to an unknown God.

How striking are the truths that history has brought down, of the peculiar and distinguishing characteristics of the children of the earthly Adam! Superstition and war, have stained every page where human life has been recorded. Ignorance and malice-the religion and the practice of devils, like a substance and its shadow, characterize the history of man. Remove the false gloss that a pseudo honour has garnished error with, and but little remains to imitate or admire, in Imperial Rome and Polished Greece; or Old Egypt; the nursery of art and science, and the mother of the rankest absurdities. If there is but little that deserves our commendation, or is worthy of imitation in the nations of olden-time, there is, negatively, a value in their errors; if seen as such, and kept in view, as the mariner eyes the beacon that warns him of impending danger. But such is man, that he will learn

to imitate error; and, in process of time, to fancy that it is truth. The great art that is profitable for man to learn, is, how to profit by the mistakes and errors of his fellows; and identifying error, when seen, to shun it, and embrace the truth. That is, the great practical art, that, like the tools of the industrious and skilful mechanic, is always useful, and profitable on all occasions. This, however much it would make for the interest, has not suited the policy of man. Man's policy has been graduated on the scale of self-interest-and man's interest has been sought among all objects that can administer to the gratification of his passions and appetites, without any deference to reason and justice. And so powerful has been human policy, that it has literally swallowed up as a minor good, every thing that can be named or imagined as a motive to action, beneath the wide-spread canopy of heaven. However extravagant such an assertion may appear, or startling, when affirmed as a sober truth, it will not diminish the force of the truth, nor alter facts. The history of man has defined his peculiar characteristics; and he has been the same animal from age to age, preserving his distinguishing traits, as much so as the lion or the tiger, on whom moral influences can effect no change. So striking is this fact, that it may be safely affirmed of man as an animal, that he is always the same, in every age; and his ruling passions are as well defined, as are the laws of chemical affinity. If these propositions be true, and both sacred and profane history attest their truth, what is the consequence that results from these premises? I answer,

First-POLICY, considered as man's governing principle, is about the same in its influences, whether it be the policy of rulers, or the ruled-whether the policy of nations, or individuals. The mind of man, with this potent policy sitting at the helm, is a moral chameleon. And the mind of man, with this helmsman, is kept under a complete subserviency to all its dictations. It is, next to JEHOVAH, the supreme moral power, in the world we live in ; this has been, and always will be the case, until " the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, shall make men free from the law of sin and death."

Second-POLICY, as I have defined it, the supreme law of man's mind, has existed as a cause, co-existent with man upon the earth; and has been as universal as God's sentient offspring. So universal and potent a cause, must

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