apprehensions of their sinful, needy, and helpless condition. In view of what has been said, I remark,

1. That if the abandonment of whatever is confessedly and visibly sinful in outward conduct is necessary to PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD to come and reign in men, must it not follow that many professed christians have never truly yielded to his dominion? That not a few are only professedly, nominally, or speculatively christians? "You must," says one, "be quite familiar with the melancholy spectacle of a zealous professor, mourning over the sinfulness of his heart, and at the same time putting forth his hand without one sigh of remorse to what is sinful in ordinary conduct. Have you never witnessed one who could speak evil of his neighbor, and was at the same time trenched among what he thought the speculations of orthodoxy, and made the utter corruption of the soul of man one of these speculations? Is it not very plain, we may ask, that persons who are in the church, who are pressed about with the motives of the gospel, who are obliged to view things in the light of God's word, and who yet can go on from year to year to do almost daily what, in the case of an awakened sinner, would destroy all confidence in the sincerity and honesty of his avowed solicitude after the way of life. I say is it not clear as noon day, that such persons in the church are in the gall of bitterness? They have not learnt to practice the first lesson in the school of Christ. They have not taken the first step towards heaven. So far from having learned to do well, they have not yet ceased to do what is notoriously and undeniably evil. Such persons may be deceived. But if they are, they have the power of imposing on themselves, which they have not of imposing on others. They ought to remember, that if they are deceived, they stand alone in the deception, and are hastening to bear alone the terrible consequences of denying their profession by their works,

2. So long as sinners neglect to prepare the way for the reign of the Saviour in their souls, they are directly contributing to prepare themselves to be lost.Men cannot avoid doing good or evil. They must be occupied in effecting their own salvation or in achieving their own destruction. As certain as men are moral agents, destined to endless retribution, so surely are they busily engaged in gathering energies and feathering their pinions to mount up with wings as eagles—to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. Or they are no less engrossed in the frightful service of wasting their powers, and accumulating about their souls those oppressive burdens, which will weigh them down forever in the prison of despair. You, my hearers, who are yet strangers to the grace of Christ, are interposing obstacles to exclude that grace from your souls. Will you continue this ruinous work? You see what is necessary to be done. You know you can do all that is necessary to be done, if you will wake up your minds and give your energies to the great concern. know in yourselves, that you can break off from doing all that is obviously wrong in outward conduct, and turn to doing all that is obviously right. You are conscious of an ability to make the subject of your duty and your eternal safety, the object of your deep, solemn and continued regard You are capable of escaping from the blinding and perverting influence of unreasonable prejudices, and judging and acting independent of their power. You can earnestly seek to attain just and humbling views of your condition; such views as will make you feel your need of a Saviour, and dispose you to place yourselves in the way of his mercy. Now if all this is true, who will be to blame if you are not saved? Who will be the guilty cause of your ruin, if you are forever lost? Must not the blame and the guilt come upon your own heads? If you will not do what you can to make straight a high way for the Saviour to your souls-if you will not prepare for his reception

You

as his character and your wants demand—must not your conscience now and forever reproach you for your cruel and murderous treatment of your own souls? Be persuaded to do your duty. Lift up the everlasting doors of your hearts, and the King of Glory shall come in !

9*

SERMON VIII.

Ends accomplished by Christ's Sacrifice.

TITUS II. 14.

WHO GAVE HIMSELF FOR US, THAT HE MIGHT REDEEM US FROM ALL INIQUITY, AND PURIFY UNTO HIMSELF A PECULIAR PEOPLE ZEALOUS OF GOOD WORKS.

THE only true religion for fallen beings, must possess marks of manifest adaptedness to their condition. Such a religion must recognize the dependance and the guilt of man. It must show his depraved appetites and passions, his inability by his unaided endeavors to become virtuous, and the adequate remedy provided for these evils. It must admit his greatness and his meanness-his glory and his wretchedness. It must represent him as at once the most excellent of all visible creatures, and in himself the most miserable. Now such a religion-a religion consisting in the belief of man's fall from a state of glory and communion with God into a state of guilt, sorrow, and alienation from God, and of his subsequent restoration by a Saviour, has always existed in the world. Amidst the incessant tide of change and decay, in which almost every thing else has passed away, this, for which all other things exist, still alone abides unaltered. It is the religion of the gospel. It has been handed down through successive generations by holy men, who stood forth the witnesses to the truth, and depositaries of the promise of a Sa

viour. Since his advent, and sufferings, the religion of which he is the author and end, in the midst of innumerable errors, divisions, revolutions, and vicissitudes, to which the condition of man is subject, has subsisted uninterrupted—undecayed. Opposition the most violent and unrelenting has not been able to destroy it from among men. And it is not the least remarkable feature of its history, that while it is the only religion that is contrary to our fallen nature, that resists our pleasurable inclinations, and, indeed, is at variance with the general opinion of mankind, it is the only one that has perpetually subsisted. Though it has been burned in the fires of a thousand persecutions, it has not been consumed.

The marks of this only true religion, are continually presented on the pages of the bible. There is a summary view of them, incidentally given in the text. What majesty and meanness, what dignity and debasement, what glory and misery, does human character wear, as contemplated in the light of this statement! How sublime the destiny of beings, that drew the interested regard and secured the intervention of the Son of God in their behalf. How deep their degradation, how helpless their ruin, how utter their wretchedness, which exacted such a stoop of humiliation in the Saviour; which required him to descend so low and to suffer so much. On what a scale of worth is the human soul measured by the redeeming act of our Redeemer God! How heavy and strong the chains, which he alone could break, and from the bondage of which his own blood alone could redeem!

But not to dwell longer on this point, I propose to detain you for a short time with a more particular consideration and enforcement of the several sentiments of the text.

The point of view in which the Saviour is here presented, is one in which it is ever deeply interesting, instructive, and affecting to contemplate him. He is here seen in his appropriate character of Redeemer. We