most, if not all of this honest incredulity. If they, in their times, found a difficulty in believing, we, in our times, can surely find none. What to them was strange and perplexing, to us is simple and obvious; what to them was veiled in the darkness of prophecy, to us is revealed in the noonday light of historical cer tainty; what to them was a hope, sanguine yet vague, of the ultimate spread of the gospel in every land, and in spite of every opposition, to us is the near completion of that hope in all its fulness and extent; but, in treating of faith, we must beware lest we make shipwreck on that unhappy rock of controversy, on which so many, and such goodly barks have split before. We must recollect, that as it is with the mouth we are to confess the Lord Jesus, so is it with the heart we are to believe that God hath raised him up from the dead; ours must

be a true and lively faith, an active, energetic, vivifying principle, that lives, and moves, and has its being in every thought we conceive, in every word we utter, in every action we perform.

And while to him who seeks some rule of life, to raise a kind of superstructure on the foundation-stone of faith that is laid for him; while to that man Scripture will present a thousand such, all alike applicable to his views and his condition; the conclusion of the epistle we have this morning heard read, will afford us a lesson for imitation, than which it would be difficult to find one more useful and appropriate; let, therefore, lest haply we grieve the holy spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemp、 tion, let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking,

For the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

be put away from us, with all malice; let us be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven us. Now to God, &c.

SERMON XI.

THE LORD'S CONTROVERSY.

MICAH Vi. 1—8.

*Hear ye now what the Lord saith ; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, 0 mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before

To assist the reader, the whole passage, attempted to be elucidated, is prefixed as a text. This, in preaching of course would be impracticable.

thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before. him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

MICAH, the Morasthite, received this distinguishing epithet from the name of a small village, in the tribe of Benjamin, in the country of Judah, where he was