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before them; and, partly from real modesty, and partly from infirmity of judgment, they hesitate to go beyond the line of things, thus made ready to their hand.

Hence, the distressingly unproductive character of average Christianity; and also, the still more alarming fact, that anything, a little in advance of the piety of the times, is regarded with astonishment. A man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, is thought a prodigy. And, an individual, especially if found in private life, who has saved from death some twenty or thirty souls, is almost taken for one of the prophets, or John the Baptist, risen from the dead.

All honour to the servants of Christ who are faithful to their Lord! Let not a word escape which shall cast over their characters, or their services, the shadow of depreciation! God approves and rewards their labour, and angels stand admiring by, while the signs which follow, testify that their commission is divine. To share their fellowship, and even to sit at their feet, is no mean distinction. But, how comes it to pass, that this honourable band includes so few, even of those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity? Another question, more

humiliating still, may possibly occur-How is it that we are not among their number?-or, (to specify particulars,-) that we can regard the perdition of our fellow creatures with indifference?-that we can gaze on the millions and hardly notice their march to everlasting death? -that while we enter our closets and pray for ourselves with tolerable fervour, the condition of the world, the expectations of Christ, the progress of his kingdom, and the ultimate subjection of the nations to the sceptre of his dominion, are only things of faint perception and of distant hope? We behold the transgressors, but where is our grief? We acknowledge their doom, but where is our pity? We approach the footstool of mercy, to make intercessions for all men, but where is the mighty wrestling of a soul in earnest ?-the agony of supplication? in a word- "the effectual fervent prayer" which God may answer without teaching his creatures to think lightly of his service, or to imagine that the merest formalism is all that he requires?

Thus far, the consequences, which have been described, are those which arise from inefficiency

rather than irreligion. some of another class

I would now advert to the disgraceful falls of

religious professors, in the tendency which they have, to neutralize the force of truth, and to give the enemy occasion to blaspheme.

Assuredly, no one can be justified in deriving from cases, even of the most flagrant apostasy, an argument for the ruin of his own soul. Yet, foolish and desperate as such a course must be, it is taken day by day continually, to the dishonour of truth and the discredit of religion. And this is nothing new. Even in the apostolic age, there were some, by reason of whom, the way of truth was "evil spoken of," 2 Peter ii. 2, and others, through whom, the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles, Rom. ii. 24.

It is somewhat difficult to imagine by what perversity of argument the enemies of godliness arrive at the conclusions which they pretend, to draw from cases of religious apostasy. It would seem, indeed, as though they imagined. that Christianity undertakes to confer, on all its disciples, a patent of moral infallibility; and, that if this infallibility can only be disproved, Christianity itself, as a natural and necessary consequence, is disproved as well, and that therefore they may venture to set its sanctions at defiance.

But the very basis of this reasoning is gratuitous. Christianity professes to impart no such thing. It is a system of facts and influences, of means and motives; and the success, or failure, of the whole, must depend on its individual reception. "Wherewithal," inquires the psalmist, "shall a young man cleanse his way?" and then replies-"By taking heed thereto according to thy word," Psalm exix. 9. But, the line of argument, now under consideration, goes upon the assumption that a young man, who refuses to take heed according to this word, by that very act may prove that this word has no tendency to make him cleanse his way. Was ever impiety more unreasonable, or fiction more preposterous! And then, the injustice of making the exception the rule! But such is the fact. A thousand may believe, to the saving of the soul; but, if only one should draw back unto perdition, the faith of all the rest is to be held as worthless.

The men of the world are too wise in their generation to reason thus in relation to the common transactions of life. They never think it a sufficient ground for despising all mercantile pursuits, that occasionally a firm of good repute finds its way into the gazette. The cir

cumstance that commercial confidence sometimes proves to have been unfounded, may make them cautious in relation to individual security; but, as men of business, they know full well, that a few isolated cases have little influence on public credit; and, that were it otherwise, trade would soon cease altogether. And, the religious question they would regard in the same light, were it not that they have a motive there, for making the worst of everything. Let some dealer in the market, or some merchant on the exchange, not only prove himself unworthy of confidence, but by consummate villany expose himself to public execration, yet the disgrace, deep as it is, shall be exclusively his own, and those whom he leaves behind, "at the receipt of custom," shall all be honourable men, notwithstanding. But, let a reputed Christian dishonour his profession, and then these very men (who would treat with indignation any attempt to confound their names, or to identify their credit, with the former transaction,) will maintain that the religious apostate is only a fair sample of the rest, and that all who make a profession similar to that which he has dishonoured and relinquished, are hypocrites and knaves. But, do they believe it?

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