many of his disciples, when he was on earth, and the apostle Paul in particular, are equally open.

But the apostle himself adds, that whoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be saved. This is a quotation from Joel: and the word used there is JEHOVAH. It is plain, therefore, that both the prophet and the apostle refer to the same person. The sense of the peculiar name given by each must also be the same. THE LORD of the apostle, is equivalent to the JEHOVAH of the prophet. Consequently, the early preachers of the gospel, did not preach the Father, but Christ; and if they did not preach him as divine, we should like to see how any method of escape from the dilemma into which this train of remark conducts us, can in any way be devised. If the doctrine be revealed, we should be guilty of an act of injustice and insult to Christ, if we did not pay him the honour justly due if it be not clearly revealed, then we are placed in a state of painful suspense, and are compelled to deny the sufficiency of the scriptures. Since we are directed to call on Jesus Christ for salvation, the doctrine now before us is of the highest moment, in reference to the proper objects of religious worship.

IV. It is also of the utmost importance, as our future prospects are materially affected by it.

If we believe this doctrine, we can enter fully into those representations which assign to him the condemnation of the wicked to eternal ruin, and the admission of the righteous to endless joy. The scriptures plainly declare that he is to be the Judge of the world. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Those, therefore, who deny his divinity, also deny his prerogative in judging. In this they act consistently, for one doctrine cannot be held at the expense of the other. But how sad are the effects of embracing one error, or denying one important doctrine, when it leads to such fearful liberties with divine truth!

The happiness of true believers consists in being made like to Christ, and dwelling continually with him. That happiness now is not complete, for we are neither completely like him, nor continually with him. But in heaven it will be perfect, because there we shall be like him, and also because we shall be with him, for we shall see him as he is. But how can these things enter into the prospects of those who deny this doctrine? Hence those who believe it, and those who deny it, have two different religions! The latter maintain, that we shall be saved by our own actions, without any substitute, through the divine mercy. The former think his atonement the only ground of hope. They think that we are guilty of idolatry-we think they are guilty of injustice to Christ. Then surely our prospects must be greatly affected by a rejection, or a reception, of this doctrine. Deny it, and alas! how they are narrowed. Receive it, and they expand and gather brightness; for Christ becomes the light of heaven-the pattern which his people are to resemble -and the fountain of everlasting glory and joy. But what attraction can there be in the future prospects of those who deny this doctrine?

In maintaining these principles, we cannot fairly be charged with a want of charity. If charity consists in offering up importunate prayer for our fellow-creatures —if it consists in seeking to promote their welfareGod forbid we should fall short of it, or be deficient in its exercise. But if it be to think with men, it must have its limits. If duty be a fundamental matter- if certain principles be essential to Christianity, then it is a compliment to men, and a trifling with their immortal souls, to say they are safe, while they deny this doctrine. But we must not compliment Christianity away in this manner; and we are fully justified in separating from the communion of all those, who hold this great error. They may be virtuous and honourable; but with discrepancies in religion we dare not unite. Light must not have fellowship with darkness, nor must we combine truth with error. How can we unite

NO. II.

K

at the table of the Lord, when one commemorates a martyr or a hero, and the other, a Saviour dying in his room, as a sacrifice for sin? In inquiring whether Christ be divine, you inquire what is to be the nature of your hope, your refuge, your foundation. They will either be bright, and safe, and strong, according as you believe him to be divine; or dark, and weak, and dangerous, as you believe him to be merely human. A mistake here is fatal, for it uproots the foundations of faith and hope, for there is no other name given under heaven whereby we can be saved.

IX.

THE MARTYR OF GUILT.

(BY THE REV. SAmuel thodey, of CAMBRIDGE.)

PROVERBS V. 22, 23.

"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray."

THE great truth taught us by these words, my brethren, is that sin is an evil of fearful tendencies, and necessarily productive, if unchecked, of remediless consequences. Other evils are partial, temporary, and circumscribed; their results may be calculated, defined, and in a measure provided against. Plague, pestilence, and famine, the earthquake, the volcano, the inundation, with the various physical ills of life, have their periods, their boundary, and their end; their ravages being confined within a given circle of time, and a given point of space. They have a height that may be reached, a depth that may be fathomed, a length and breadth that may be explored. But sin, more dreadful, has laid waste, not here and there a country, but a world, and hastens to spread its disastrous influ

ences over the untravelled extent of an eternity to come. We may say of unrepented, unpardoned, and unforsaken sin, as the apostle says of the love of Christ, that it has heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths, which utterly surpass all human knowledge.

The reason is obvious. Moral evil corrupts and vitiates the mind itself, carries the contagion of a mortal disease through all its affections and powers, and affects the moral condition of the man through the whole duration of his being, since it tends to separate from God, the source of all good, for ever. This tendency of evil to perpetuate itself, referred to in our text, together with the extreme difficulty of escaping from its thraldom, when it has once established its ascendency, may well excite the most solemn emotions of which our nature is capable. The wicked man is said to be holden with the cords of his sin; in the greatness of his folly to go astray, and, repudiating all the means employed for his restoration, "he dies without in

struction."

Our subject is very comprehensive. It might task an angel's powers properly to follow out the views it affords of the progress of evil in the human character; the aggravating circumstances which heighten the sinner's final ruin; and the aspect in which it leads us to contemplate the divine dispensations. We can only briefly sketch,

I. The views it affords of the power and progress of evil in the human mind.

1. It ensnares. "His own iniquities shall TAKE the wicked." The reference is to the methods adopted in the East by those who hunt for game, or for beasts of prey. Sometimes they employ a tame elephant to conduct another into the toils, or surround a considerable tract of ground with a circle of nets, collecting the wild beasts of that quarter into a narrow compass-or dig a pit, near the retreats of the lion and the tiger, which they cover over with branches of trees, and when the

animal is entangled in the snare, they bind him fast with cords. Similar stratagems are employed to entangle human victims; a wide trench being dug in the ravine along which the horseman is to pass, covered over with sods or loose earth, and as his horse sinks in the treacherous soil, his enemies spring up from their ambush and secure their prisoner. So skilfully are these trains hidden, that the hunter himself, returning upon the track, scarcely recognises the spot, and has been fatally involved in the net-work he had spread for another's foot. The Psalmist, to whom, as a shepherd, all these practices were familiar, strikingly observes, "The wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made. In the net that they hid is their own foot taken."

We may well pray to be delivered "from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil." Evil allures under the forms of good. The fruit appears, as to the first apostates, pleasant to the eye, good for food, and even desirable to make one wise; but the artifices of the serpent are unseen. All the way is white as snow that hides the pit. The prodigal thought, when he set out from home, that his happiness was never to end; but he soon found, poor young man, that it was never to begin, till, as a weeping penitent, he retraced his footsteps thither. Everything went well with Gehazi till he was literally "taken in his own iniquity," and went out from his master's presence ❝ a leper as white as snow." The youthful sinner dreams, like Joseph, of honour, advancement, and delight, the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars, bowing down at his feet; but he dreams not of the pit, the prisonhouse, the dungeon, or the iron that enters the soul. Vice is the greatest sorceress in the world; but the deluded victim soon finds that to yield to her enchantments is like drinking poison out of a golden cup. "He knoweth not that the dead are there; her guests are in the depths of hell."