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their value. Christ, my brethren, is the subject of all our preaching the ground of argument, the magazine of arms, and the great motive of persuasion. He is all that we want to give peace to the conscience, strength to the feeble, patience and courage to the suffering. He is all that is wanted to purify the affections, and loosen us from earth, and lift us up to Heaven. Christ formed within us the hope of glory; will be followed by the setting of our affections on things that are above. If we preach the law, it is that it may be a schoolmaster to bring our fellow-men to Christ, the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. If we preach repentance, it is because Christ is exalted to the right hand of God, to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto Israel and forgiveness of sins-that repentance should be preached everywhere in his name. Do we preach faith? It is because Christ is the author, object, and finisher of faith. And if as faithful men, who cannot shun to declare the whole counsel of God, we preach the torments of Hell, it is to warn men of the wrath to come, and induce them to flee to Christ as a glorious refuge. And when we preach the joys of heaven, it is to allure to that bright world-to encourage sinners to fly to Christ, who is the way to the inheritance of the saints in glory. As ministers we are without occupation, commission, authority, subject or hope of success, except as we realize the presence and authority of Christ. One is our master, even Christ. It is his commandment to "go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." All our strength as ministers of the Gospel is from Christ. Paul and Apollos, Calvin and Edwards, are nothing without him. He giveth the increase. As the clouds from which the rain descends have not that rain in themselves, but derive it from the sea and various moist places of the earth, and then disperse it abroad; so all the efficacy of the Gospel which is preached, is derived from Jesus Christ, who is the overflowing fountain of all that is good and holy. The treasure is committed to earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God.

With two remarks, I close this discourse.

And the first is this, that to be a minister of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, is to bear an awful and fearful responsibility. No man should take this office upon himself unless he is called of God to it. And then he should ever bear in mind that he is set to watch for souls as one that must give an account to the Judge of quick and dead in the light of eternity. Christ's ascension gift is not nuncios, popes and cardinals; nor clergymen, nor assemblies, nor vicar-generals, nor rabbis, nor Ulemans, nor reverend, nor right reverends, but bishops or pastors to feed the people with knowledge and understanding. Of all things clerical,

pride and pomp and hypocrisy are the most contemptible. What can be more melancholy than to see a man who is set between the living and the dead-a mouth for God-himself a poor sinful man, converted and saved by free grace, and honored with the ministry of reconciliation, so far forgetting his high calling as to compliment himself in the pulpit, and be far more anxious to show himself off, than to win souls to heaven by preaching Christ and Him crucified?

The second remark is, that in proportion to the divine authority attached to the living ministry of the word, is the responsibility on the part of the hearers of preachers of the Gospel, to take heed how and what they hear. As men sent of God to preach the Gospel of His grace, their authority is from heaven. In preaching Christ and Him crucified, they speak not their own words, but the words of God. If you receive their message, you shall inherit eternal life; if you reject it, you reject the offer of pardoning mercy from your eternal Judge. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be damned.

May the ever blessed Head of the Church multiply grace upon grace to you, my beloved brethren, and enable him whom you have called to be your pastor, and who is now set over you in the Lord, so to live and labor and preach from the glorious platform of the prophets and apostles, and of the noble army of martyrs, and of saints, that he may both save himself and those that hear him. May he be a burning and a shining light among you many years. May he be full of faith and of the Holy Ghost-mighty in the Scriptures-showing unto you the way of salvation; and when he stands before you at the judgment seat of Christ, may his sentence be: Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou with this thy flock into the joy of thy Lord.

AMEN, AND AMEN.

CREDULITY.

Infidels scoff at the credulity of the Christian. But let us fairly state the case, and see whether of all beings in existence the infidel is not the most weakly credulous. What is the infidel's creed? He believes, that the whole world united in a conspiracy to impose upon themselves about the era of the introduction of christianity; that they invented an universal persuasion of the coming of some great personage, and that by mere accident their conjecture was verified in the birth of Christ; that verses or poems, the productions of men who lived several hundred years before, accidentally happened to apply to that extraordinary person, and things the most contradictory did accidentally concur in him; that

he was a deceiver, and an enthusiast, and a false claimant to a divine commission, and yet, that he was, without exception, the purest and most amiable of beings; and that he succeeded in his object without any of the means usually employed by similar characters; for without money, without troops, without power, he convinced multitudes of his divine authority. He believes, that after Christ was openly crucified as a malefactor, twelve illiterate fishermen took up the extraordinary tale that he had risen from the dead, although these fishermen must have known the contrary if he was a deceiver, and without any assignable motive, in the face of danger and death, they formed the bold design of converting the whole world to a belief of this strange story; that although aware of the calamities which they must thus occasion to mankind, and therefore men of unfeeling and cruel disposition, their writings and actions exhibit the purest morality and the most benevolent spirit; that without education or literature they composed several works, in which the leading character or subject of their memoirs, if a fictitious personage, is unquestionably one of the most wonderful creatures of imagination that the range of literature can furnish-a character altogether unlike that of any being who ever dwelt on earth-sustained throughout with the most exact consistency, and the most minute and apparently unnecessary particularity of dates and times and places; that they travelled over the greater part of the world, every where successful, though every where persecuted; and that they were eventu ally the means of subverting the religious establishment of the most powerful nation on earth. Yes, and the infidel believes that all this was CHANCE; these men impostors; the whole story a fable and a forgery!! If it be so, then the case is without a parallel in history; and the man who receives the creed of the infidel, betrays a credulity so capacious, a faculty so prodigious of overlooking difficulties, that we cannot but suspect there is something wrong in the ordinary powers of his understanding. But the case is otherwise. Infidelity is not so much a derangement of the head as of the heart. Believing as we do, that the words of Christ are words of eternal truth, we maintain that it is impossible for any man to disbelieve the Bible, who searches it with a right spirit. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

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"Men of the world, which have their portion in this life."-PSALM XVII. 14.

It is a striking description of human depravity, which is given as a reason why the Spirit would not always strive with man, "that he also is flesh." Such is the predominance in man, as fallen, of the flesh over the Spirit of the sensitive over the rational-that it sinks him from the dignity of his original, as made after the image of God, into a creature of flesh. But to man, as thus fallen, the Spirit of God is graciously given, by his secret and powerful insinuations of light and love, to strive with him; awakening him to the consideration of those divine glories which alone are answerable to his higher nature, and so recalling him to God and heaven. Those who yield to his influence are made partakers of his holiness, and so are named after him spiritual; while the rest are fleshly or carnal still and the distinction thus formed passes over into the future world, and constitutes the elementary principle of eternal life or death. "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

The same distinction is marked in the Scriptures by the phrases, 66 sons of men," and "sons of God." "Men of the world," and "men of God." "O ye sons of men! how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity and seek after leasing? But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself." The sons of men and the godly are here

spoken of in contrast with each other. So also our Saviour said to his disciples: "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own, but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." This language marks a difference among men that is radical. It imports that the world are naturally in apostasy from God, and that those who are morally conformed to him, are not of the world; but are formed to a new and heavenly character. The same thing is presented to us, in the passage which contains the text: "Deliver my soul," the Psalmist prays, "from the wicked, which are thy sword, from men which are thy hand, O Lord; from men of the world, which have their portion in this life; and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children and leave the rest of their substance to their babes. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." David found himself encompassed with enemies. They were "the wicked" men whose wickedness made them enemies to God as well as himself. They were "men of the world who had their portion in this life"-men who as they sought, received, their good things here-many of them were prosperous men; filled with hid treasures, and securely laying up for their children the possessions which themselves enjoyed while he was encompassed with affliction. But he did not envy them. For a thousand times more than they enjoyed, he would not exchange conditions with them. The happiness which he sought was of another kind, and would remain when the world should have passed away. It would be found in Him who only hath immortality, and would be perfected when he and all men should awake from the slumbers of the grave. My brethren, there have always and every where been these two classes of men. While all naturally are of the world, there are those into whose minds the true light has shined; those who have learned by faith to tread this world under their feet, in their aspirations after the glory that is to be revealed; those who, under the trials of this life, have solaced themselves with the hope and the foretaste of what they are to enjoy in the future. To which of these classes we belong is a matter of infinite concern. Whatever we are, we must soon die, and accordingly as we shall have been men of the world, or men of God, will be our future destiny. God has suspended our state hereafter on our ultimate choice here. He has submitted to ourselves to decide whether, as men of the world we will have our portion here, or as men of God will seek it in the enjoyment of himself in heaven. "To them, who by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory, honor, and immortality, he will render eternal life-and to men that are contentious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, tribulation, and anguish."

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