Now, dear brethren, observe how one class of persons, in order to get rid of this mystery, as they vainly think, magnify human free-will into the turning point of power in this great subject, so as to make the omnipotent God pause. in his designs for super-omnipotent man. And mark how another party, to get rid of the mystery, as they vainly think, on the other side, deny the human free-agency, and make man a piece of matter, as a machine. Neither of these two things, when pressed so as to infringe upon the other, can be true; yet the truth lies in the admission of both these statements, as a revelation from. God unexplained. It is a mystery. We may indeed say more upon this point.: Here God hath revealed himself; not unto the clearing up of the difficulty, but unto the intelligent view of it; so far that we have become intelligently ignorant. Is that a contradiction in terms? "Intelligently ignorant." No man will say so, but the man who is so ignorant as not to be conscious of his own ignorance. The wise man will acknowledge, that the height of his wisdom consists in having become intelligently ignorant. It is of the nature of an intelligent creature to decide upon the evidence before it; and to decide freely upon that evidence, and it is in the nature of things, that God, in his supreme providence, should minister whatever quantity of evidence, upon every subject, he seeth fit to every person. Such person, then, decides freely, in the exercise of his free-will, upon the evidence submitted to him; but the amount of evidence, the measure, the time, the place of the evidence, all these are in the sovereign disposal of God in his Providence. So that, by ministering a certain quantity of evidence to a man upon a point, the decision of the man's mind, according to the action of free-will, is secured, without any violence done to the constitution of the moral creature. He acts freely upon the evidence he has; the evidence, the quantity of it, the measure, the time, the place, all the outward circumstances connected with it, are in the sovereign disposal of God. Has any man the whole case before him, in all its bearing, direct and indirect, present and future, of any question upon which he is called to decide? No such thing; the man must needs look through futurity into eternity, to see all the bearings of his conduct: but upon what he does see, he acts freely. O verily God is a God that hideth himself while he revealeth himself.

My dear brethren, one of my objects at this time, is to implore you not to be turned back from the simplicity of faith, by plausible talk about the unreasonableness of admitting mysteries. It is a time when the foundations of our faith are sifted; it is a time when we, who are the authorized teachers of the faith, ought to grapple with these siftings, and go to the foundations themselves. It is a time when we should be prepared to stand in our places, and meet the diversity of attacks that are made upon our faith; not by railing for railing, but by sound teaching; that the minds of our people, being in possession of the subject, may be fortified, not to retort against error, but to reject the error, and to be quiet.

Now let us take another point in which God verily hideth himself while he revealeth himself, and in which we must again find a mystery: it is in THE RICHES OF HIS ATONING LOVE IN JESUS CHRIST.

We now come to use expressions with which you are more familiar; but if you will examine the expressions, you will find that they involve you in a

mystery, as dark and as inexplicable as either of the two we have hitherto touched upon either the Trinity of the persons, or the absolute Sovereignty of disposal in the Godhead. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life:""In this was manifested the love of God, that he gave his Son to be the propitiation for our sins:" "He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He hath laid our sins upon him, and his blood "cleanseth from all sin." What statements are these? For "sin is the transgression of the law :" the law is the expression of God's eternal mind and truth: not one jot or one tittle of the law can be made void; it must all be fulfilled; it must all be magnified as the expression of the righteous character of God. An offence against that high and glorious declaration of God's character, is an offence against himself, the Infinite God. The demerit of the offence must bear proportion to the dignity of the person offended.

Look how this may be simply illustrated in human things. Suppose a man were to commit an offence consisting of the act of striking another man; the punishment justly awarded to that offender will vary with the dignity of the person struck. If the man struck were an equal, his punishment is comparatively light. Suppose the offender were a soldier; if the man struck be his commanding officer, his punishment is enhanced if the man struck were the king, his offence is high treason, the punishment is death. Now mark; the offence was the same throughout; it was striking a man; but the punishment varies with the position and dignity of the man struck: so that from a petty fine, or a short imprisonment, for striking one man, the punishment is magnified into death for striking another man.

Apply this to an offence against the Infinite God, and see what sort of a punishment such an offence calls for: and who shall bear that punishment? Lay it upon a finite creature-it will take him through all eternity to endure, and he will never have finished it; for, the punishment being infinite, it must either be infinite in quantity or infinite in time. A finite creature can have but a finite quantity, and therefore he must have an infinite time. Who shall endure that punishment so as to make an end of it? Whoever does it must have infinite power; and yet the punishment to be endured which a man deserves for breaking the law of God, must be such a punishment as a man can feel, such punishment as can attach itself to the constitution of a man; and yet we have seen that it must be such as can appeal with infinity to claim merit before God. Who shall endure it, if there is not a person to endure it, who, while he has a divine nature to give infinity to every pang, has a human nature to give infinity to every pang; so that every suffering shall apply to us, and have merit with our God? If there be not such a sufferer, there is no salvation. And how can there be such a sufferer? Here is the mystery-the mystery of the holy incarnation. The incarnation is the proximate mystery of redemption. Who can explain it? God and man one person: as soul and body compose one man, God and man composing one Christ; so that the lash of the broken law shall take effect on human flesh, and the reproaches deserved by fallen men shall break a human heart and yet the person who has human flesh to be lacerated, and a human heart to be broken, shall have merit with God, and shall, instead of being

exposed to the punishment throughout eternity, be able to concentrate and to exhaust the punishment at once.

Here is a mystery. Now, I am well persuaded, that it is because of being involved in this very mystery, that so many of our reasoning and educated fellow-countrymen and fellow-sinners are, in mind, if not avowedly in creed, rejecting the peculiarities of the atonement. But where is the reason, where is the judgment, where is the superior discernment, of refusing the proximate lesson, because of being involved in an ultimate mystery? Let me appeal again to the astronomer and to the anatomist; and let me send these reasoning Socinians, or others, who reject the atonement because of the mystery-let me send them back to school to learn where there is any science without a mystery. Let us turn them to their own hearts, to see how the movement of some mysterious visitant within, shall enable them to move the fingers and hands without; and when they have explained all this, and made it perfectly clear, then let us hear their reasoning (but not before) against a mystery in religion.

And yet again: when the glorious statements connected with the work and person of Jesus Christ, God and man in one person, are made in the hearing of men, they proclaim such a manifestation of God's love towards man, as is calculated to put every reasonable being upon a moral trial: enough is done for every man that has the reason of a man, and that hears the Word of God, to put him upon a moral trial-a trial between the love of sin and the love of God; the love of God manifested in Christ, and claiming the sinner's love in return, and the love of sin, experienced in the heart and flesh, holding the sinuer a willing captive. To this the Saviour appeals when he says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." He that hath natural capacities to hearken to other subjects, to be influenced by what he hears, to be induced to undertake self-denying labours upon the authority of evidence given, and the practical power of that evidence over his moral composition-he that hath ears so to hear, in human matters, let him exert those moral powers in this greater matter, and let him hear the love of God manifested in his Son. Thus all who hear the Gospel are put upon a fresh trial: they are transferred from the comparatively untried state of Tyre and Sidon, into the deeper trial of Chorazin and Bethsaida. The result of that truth, owing to the corruption of human nature, is, according to the Word of Truth, that men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; and that they all, with one consent, begin to make excuse. Then what must be the consequence? If all, with one consent, begin to make excuse, if it be the universal characteristic that they love darkness rather than light, then is the light cast out. And so it would be, but that, in that moral trial, when every reasonable being who hears the words of the Gospel, is put, as it were, upon a moral pivot, on which he is to turn one way or other, and incline to the love of God or the love of sin-when the love of sin has overcome him, brings him down, and he is making excuses, when they are all, with one consent, making excuses-then comes the effectual grace of God, the effectual energy of salvation, by the power of the Holy Ghost, turning the sinner on the right side of this pivot, and securing him to God for ever.

This is the way of salvation; if it were not for this, there would be no salvation at all, after all that Christ has done. And this is the execution in time, and from day to day, of the eternal decree of God's election. This is the

transcribing into the book of the Church, the names that are written in the book of life.

This is GOD, IN THE ENERGY OF HIS SAVING Power, by the Holy GHOST. Now here there is a mystery; for if man be so fallen, that the moral trial he is put upon by the statements of redemption in Jesus Christ, would invariably turn against him, and if God knows this, then it seems to our reasoning mind, very like a mockery of our misery; and indeed it is so denounced by many. Here the real reason is, that they will not have a mystery: they will judge God to be a God that does not hide himself; but that while he proclaims himself a Saviour, he should leave nothing still hidden. Whereas, though known as a Saviour, he is yet a God that hideth himself in many particulars, and in this among the rest. There is honesty in his invitations, "Look unto me and be ye saved." There is honesty in the statement, “As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. Why will ye die?" There is honesty in the command, "Repent and believe the Gospel, and ye shall be saved." There is honesty in the promise," Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;" and there is truth in the statement, that "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." And here is a mysterious connexion between the possession of the outward means, and the reception of the inward power. It is in the means, and yet not invariably in the means. "Faith cometh by hearing;" yet not to all that hear. How is this? God, verily thou dost hide thyself from us. And shall we refuse these facts upon the face of revelation, because the admission of them involves us in a mystery? Let me ask again, where is the superior discernment of this, where is the judgment in this case: to blot out these pages from the Bible, because they involve us in a mystery by their admission-or again to admit that we are as little children, and to receive the facts of our divine philosophy? The facts of our divine philosophy, are the verses and the chapters of this book; and he is no philosopher who would reject a single fact, because it involved him in a difficulty, or opposed some previous theory. Nay, how is all sound philosophy followed, and prosecuted unto truth, but by holding men's theories in abeyance, under the command of fresh facts, so that fresh facts shall rectify theories, and theories shall be prostrated before facts? And so should men's judgment be before verses of the Bible; for these are facts from God.

Now one expression more, one topic briefly touched upon, is necessary here, I perceive: for the force of the moral demonstration I am offering you step by step, evidently rests on the reception of this book as God's revelation. If a man say, "I deny these verses are revelation," the subject matter of the dispute is altogether changed immediately. I should only say of such persons, or of such a state of things, at present, that the evidence for the revelation is not mysterious. The evidence for the fact of the revelation is let down to the men; it stands on historical testimony; it stands in its miraculous authority before the eyes of men, corroborated by facts, and handed down by authentic testimony. It stands in such a moral demonstration, connected with the character of the first promulgators of the truth, as involves the men who deny the revelation in greater absurdity of credulousness, than those who receive it.

But that is not our present subject; it is a separate and important subject in its own place. All I am concerned to say about it at present, is, that the evidence for the origin of the revelation is not mysterious; it is let down within the reach of human science and human inquiry, and any man who refuses to inquire about it, and denies it in ignorance, deserves the consequences.

Here, then, my brethren, I have invited you to contemplate God in these four aspects in which he is set before us: some statements in each made clear, brought forward into the front ground of the picture; and in each a mystery hanging, in the dimness of the horizon, upon us. And what would we have as creatures? Would we stand upon such a pinnacle, that there shall be no horizon? "Vain man would be wise, though he be born like the ass's colt:" and because he has intelligence enough to perceive that there is a mystery, and pride enough to refuse to submit to it, he abuses the reason and intelligence in the pride of refusing what he might know, because he cannot know what God still keeps secret. Be ye reconciled to mysteries; and be ye satisfied with revelation. These are the statements, my brethren, this is the view of things, this is the combination of truth, for which our forefathers bled in this land: without attempting to explain the mysteries, they asserted and re-asserted the facts of the case. You find them in the formularies of the Church :-the person of God, declared with simplicity and plainness, and not attempted to be explained; the sovereignty of God proclaimed with equal simplicity and plainness, in the evident purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus; the all-sufficiency of the atonement in the blood of Jesus, proclaimed distinctly; and the mysterious combination of God and man in one person, declared, but not explained; and the invincible energy of the power of the Holy Spirit in winning the will of the sinner. And being made willing in the day of God's power, he shall run in the way of God's commandment, and delight in the knowledge of God himself; and so go on in good works, arising out of the love of God in his heart, and dictated by the glory of his heavenly Father in this life, unto eternal salvation: I say these are the statements for which our fathers bled in this land; these are the boundary marks which they have set up for us to exclude "philosophy falsely so called," and to exclude, on the other side, the abuses of the mystery to which I briefly alluded at first, by heaping up more mysteries, and more Mediators, which the Romish system had so largely introduced. Armed on both sides we are in the formularies of the Church, we have, in truth, been but exhibiting in a more enlarged form, and rendering with more distinctness to your understandings, as God hath permitted me, the statements which are compressed into an attitude of defence against heresy in the formularies of the Church. Hold them fast: meddle not with them who love to change such truths. My brethren, it is most deplorable to think how the best things become abominable, when abused by man's mismanagement; and there is no instance of this more deplorable than the way in which these very formularies of the Church have been abused-the way in which the Church itself has been abused -the way in which that, which ought to have been for the salvation of the united empire, has, through negligence, through slothfulness, through pride, through unbelief, through worldly-mindedness, become the cause of contention and is likely to be the cause of strife, and even danger in the land.

You are aware of the sentiments it has pleased God to allow me to utter in