The simplest possible test may be applied to the motive and rule of Christian morality as thus stated. Let any one, after furnishing his mind with a distinct conception of the personal character of Christ, compel himself to bring his own conduct, dispositions, and converse, throughout any one day, to this gauge, namely, its supposed conformity, in principle, with what we may call the style of our Lord's behaviour. This criterion will be found to reach to the extent of the most arduous and unusual duties, as well as to fit the most ordinary. If we are compelled to grant that the application of such a test would carry us forward always toward whatever is pure, and just, and kind, have we not virtually granted that Christianity is divine?

What then remains is to give impulse to the rule we acknowledge to be good. And this must be by admitting into the heart, in all its power, that faith which connects the soul with the Saviour, by the vital agency of the Spirit of grace.

Then it is that

abstract virtue becomes embodied, and lives. The office of the Holy Spirit, as we learn by the apostolic word is "to take of the things of Christ"— whatever is his distinctively, and "to reveal them to us." In other words, to expand the divine pattern of all perfection before our contracted faculties, part by part, as we are able to receive it ;-to convey to us the lesson of perfection, in morsels, and

to render us, by a gradual process of assimilation, 66 new creatures in Christ Jesus."

But this office of the Holy Spirit has its own peculiar tendency to promote the purification of the heart. How impressive is the apostolic appeal to Christians, "What! know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in you?" and again, the injunction not "to grieve the Holy Spirit." It is when Christianity is spiritually understood, and when whatever tends to substitute symbols for realities is rejected, that a trinitarian faith is brought to bear with effect upon the understanding, the heart and the life. If this faith be doubtingly or distrustfully held, is it any wonder that it is found to be ineffective? or if it be held in conjunction with notions which either oppress the heart, or which favour the propensity to rest in formalities, then ought we to suppose it can exhibit its proper influence?

But we are speaking of a spiritual and cordial trinitarian faith, and then we affirm it to be the basis of the only virtue which deserves the name-a serious, reverential, happy, and affectionate devotion of the whole nature to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christian virtue is the habit, the motive, and the act of the soul meditating upon "the love of God," and "the grace of the Lord

Jesus," and enjoying "the communion of the Holy Spirit."

Let it be remarked, that apostolic trinitarian doctrine-so utterly unlike the crabbed definitions of a wrangling and unevangelic age, brings the inscrutable mystery of the divine nature to bear immediately upon the affections, under an aspect of pleasurable emotion. How little has this been regarded by angry disputants !-How grievously have those misunderstood apostolic orthodoxy, who have pursued each other to the death, because not consenting to the same jargon as themselves! We cannot too attentively regard the apostolic method of teaching this great truth-of shedding it into the heart. Our CREED, if derived from the Scriptures, speaks to us of "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the love of God, and of the communion of the Holy Ghost." This is the orthodoxy which, when cordially entertained, impels Christians to love each other and all men, and to abound in good works, at sacrifices and offerings, with which "God is well pleased."

But it is reasonably asked-if such be the intensity and excellence of the motives which you affirm to spring from an evangelic faith, how do you explain the frequent and lamentable instances in which those who adopt these motives, and talk of them perpetually, are found wanting in the first

duties of morality, and guilty even of outraging its plainest requirements? Nothing is more simple: such persons, and the number of such is never small, and in times of formality or of controversial agitation, like the present, it will be large-such persons, unhappily, while they have surrendered their hold of the common, or as they would term them, of the worldly and unevangelic motives of virtue, are very far from having come into any real communion with those motives of which they so fluently speak. They are in fact unprovided with any efficacious motives of conduct; and they fall, while those less doctrinally enlightened than themselves, stand they are, in fact, the easiest of all the victims of temptation :-if the first assault upon virtue be repelled from fear of shame, or from mere habit; -the second, or the third, prevails over the feeble resistance of a mortality which has no basis, and no vitality. But when we speak of the efficacy of the principles of Christian morals, we must mean, assuredly, nothing less than the actual possession of that motive, which we affirm to be the impulse of all virtue. A thousand instances of failure and delinquency, among the professors of evangelic principles, prove only that the profession was all that had been attained by the individual.

It is manifest that a principle of morals so specific and peculiar as the one we have named, cannot exist

in power apart from a clear recognition of that prime truth of Christianity whence immediately it springs. Any doctrine, therefore, the tendency of which is to throw obscurity upon this first article of belief -Justification through faith in the propitiatory work of Christ; or any religious practice, the effect of which is to mingle what is human with what is divine, in the matter of our acceptance with God, must operate, so far, to chill the religious affections, and to bring Christian morality, in the same proportion, down to the level of that morality which is unchristian-whether philosophic, or superstitious. It is on this ground, therefore, that we claim, without hesitation, the ethical beauty of Christianity, as proper and peculiar to an evangelic faith; because every element of Christian virtue bears relation to a correspondent element of Christian doctrine; and whatever darkens the one, enfeebles the other.

A motive of virtue, so far as it may be peculiar, will express itself in its own manner. The results of two motives, themselves differing greatly, will not be the same. Now the Christian morality, specified as such in the New Testament, has this very peculiarity, which we should look for, if indeed its principle be the one we have named. Most remarkable is it, that though our Lord, before his having accomplished the work of redemption,