fortable assurance, that the morning light will find you making the land of your inheritance? Here are glad tidings for you; tidings which we pray the Spirit of God to carry home to your hearts : here is One whom the winds and the sea obey, who is willing to become the inmate of your bosom, and there to take up his lasting abode, and to speed you on your way rejoicing. It is his absence that has raised the storm you cannot quell, and which has kept you, and will for ever keep you from the wished-for haven. In vain you labour to advance by your own poor and hopeless efforts; watch after watch of your short night is passing, and the shore is still far, far beyond your view. O! believe me, it is his presence which can effect, what neither man nor angel can attempt: it is his presence, though you know it not, which is all you need. Admit him freely in all his offices as Prophet, Priest, and King, into your heart, and from that

hour the tempest within, and the storm without, shall alike be hushed, and you shall be carried forward calmly, peacefully, and joyfully, through the still waters, to that haven where you would be. You shall not only see, but enter that blissful country, where Christ for ever reigns, "the King of kings, and Lord of lords."

43

LECTURE III.

MATT. XVI. 18.

"I SAY ALSO UNTO THEE, THAT THOU ART PETER, AND UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH, AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT."

Ar the present day, when the pretensions of the church of Rome have assumed a prominency which in this Protestant kingdom has been long denied them, it behoves every member of our national Establishment, as far as his leisure and ability will permit, to make himself master of the doctrinal subjects in dispute. I do not mean to say that he is bound to enter the dry and barren field. of polemical divinity, and to lose his time and his temper in the mazes of

religious controversy; but simply, with the Bible in his hand, and with earnest prayer for the divine teaching, to examine the great leading points of difference between the churches; that he may not himself be "carried away with every wind of doctrine," and that he may be able wisely to give to others" an answer of the hope that is in him." We have lived so long in a state of security, that many of us are really ignorant of the chief causes which led our forefathers to separate from a church which had made "the word of God of none effect, through their traditions.' The consequence of this ignorance is, that men hesitate not to assert, that the differences between the churches, are little more than verbal differences; not considering that such an acknowledgment, if it were true, would distinctly prove the reformed religion to be, what the

1 Mark vii. 13.

Romanist has always pronounced it, an unjustifiable schism.

Feeling the truth of these reflections most powerfully myself, I trust you will bear with me, if, while speaking upon the words of the text, I am led to dwell upon them in a more argumentative manner than has usually been adopted in these Lectures. At the same time I shall feel it my bounden duty, as it is on all occasions my earnest desire, most scrupulously to avoid every angry and irritating consideration; and while endeavouring to speak the truth in sincerity, to endeavour equally to speak it in love; remembering that if our creed be more pure, and our church more scriptural than those from whom we differ, a double wo will be ours, if the spirit in which we differ be not more heavenly, the temper more chastened, and subdued.

Our Lord, in the chapter from which