ligence, as the last fond hope, to which a parent's heart could cling? Would he not hail that incredulity as the only favourable symptom in so sad a case —a sign still left, that his child was not irrevocably gone? "Blessed be God!" he would say, "a ray of light still cheers the gloom, and bids me not utterly despair. My child is still a stranger to my afflictions: at least, he knows but a part of all that I have suffered for him. He has not listened, because he could not bear the full recital of my wrongs and sorrows. He refuses to hear, because he knows that he has not fortitude to hold out against a claim so tender, and so irresistible ; because he feels that that tale of woe, if brought to bear, with the pointed evidence of truth, would pierce his soul, and add fresh anguish to the wounds of conscience. Oh! then, my child's heart, though perverted, is not lost to feeling. It has not been put to proof. My sufferings have not been pleaded with it, and pleaded with it in vain. The happy moment, therefore, may yet arrive, when, deserted by the world, and softened by his own afflictions, he will come to himself, and listen to the still small voice, that tells him of a parent's sufferings and a parent's love; when he will hear, and believe, and return, in penitence, to my arms." Is not this, I say, like the language of genuine feeling? Is it not true to nature? Is it

VOL. II.

E

not what you would expect to flow, spontaneously, from a father's bosom? And, on the other hand, can any thing be more opposed even to common sense, than the supposition, that a parent, circumstanced as I have described, would hail, with satisfaction, the assurance that his child did believe the whole of what he suffered;-that this parent should actually consider his belief as a kind of compen

sation for his crimes- a kind of substitute for his repentance:- that he should view, as a flattering symptom, that which proved only the malignity of the disease; and rejoice in having made the discovery, that the most powerful remedy the case admitted of, had been fully, but ineffectually administered?

And now, my brethren, I would apply all this to the point before us; well aware, however, that the parallel is most imperfect. That blessed Being who gave himself for us, and suffered for our sins, has long since rested from his labours, and ceased from all his sorrows here below. His humiliation is past; the days of his mourning are ended; he has overcome the sharpness of death; and now dwells in regions of light, and bliss, and glory; and is seated, in calm majesty, upon the right hand of the throne of God. But, when he looks from that serenest heaven, upon the vineyard which he has watered with his own blood, and sees the

lives, and reads the hearts, of those who call themselves Christians: will the fruit they too often bear, and the returns they too often make, appear less vile, and less ungrateful, because they profess to know, and to believe, all a Saviour has done and suffered for them? No. Far more justly might we conceive, that his tender mercy would lay hold on infidelity itself, as some extenuation, if any there could be, of such depravity and guilt. We might, rather, picture to our imagination our great High Priest, as pleading this unbelief, in bar of immediate judgment upon rebellious sinners. "Their blindness," he would say, "is deeply criminal: but in that blindness some hope remains. They do not believe all the ills and all the agonies which I have suffered for them. Give them, then, a further respite. Let them alone this year also. Grant me one more opportunity of putting to proof, what new providences, new instruments, new ministers, and new visitations of my Spirit, may effect. Let me try whether afflictions may soften, or mercies win their hearts; so that they may be disposed to receive the truth, in the love of it, and to look on Him whom they have pierced. Yes: after all their obduracy and impenitency, now may be the accepted time; now the day of their salvation. The glad tidings may reach their ears: and, when they

believe, they will be converted, and I shall heal them."

In what I have urged, you cannot conceive, my brethren, that I wish to lessen the horror, which, I trust, you feel, at the very thought of infidelity. The heaviest charge that can be brought against it is just, let it come from what quarter it may. But infidelity can bring its charges, too, against lukewarm, nominal Christianity. The celebrated Lord Rochester, after his conversion, declared, that the lives and conversation of professors, and still most of dignified professors, had, of all arguments, been the strongest, with him, against the truth of revelation. But, in fact, what Lord Rochester condemned, was not Christianity: it was but a poor pretender to the name; a paltry counterfeit of the thing. What he beheld around him was that mixture of high profession, and of hollow practice; that substitution of form and ceremony for the inward and undivided homage of the soul; that which has been, in all ages, the scandal of the visible church, the laughing-stock of the infidel, and the pain and grief of all God's children. Such was the abomination of desolation which he saw, and which he was told was Christianity. No wonder, then, that he ridiculed its pretensions, and rejected its authority, with indignant scorn.

Would to God the time were come that infidels and worldly Christians would both awake from their dangerous slumbers :-that the one would turn from darkness unto light; the other from the power of Satan unto God: that the one would believe that God is; the other that he is the rewarder of those alone that diligently seek him: that the one would no longer deny the Lord that bought them; the other cease, while they say, "Hail! Master," to crucify the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. The Gospel opens one door alone to each: but it calls on both to enter in and be saved. Christ is the door, and living faith the entrance;-faith in the Son of God, who gave himself a ransom for all;-faith, which worketh by love, which changeth the heart, and life, and nature; which raises the soul from the death of sin, and delivers it from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

This blessed transformation, this new creature, this conformity and assimilation of our tempers and our souls, to the whole mind that was in Christ Jesus, is Christianity; is, my brethren, the religion you profess. Are you, then, already, its true disciples; living in the spirit of the Gospel; breathing after God; crucified to the world; your