with unimpressible levity and indifference, and plead some worthless trifle as having a prior claim upon his attention and time !— I put it to every one of you, whether you would not feel this a more intolerable insult, than if your plan were to be heard, opposed, and rejected? O think, then, of the insult offered to the blessed God by the slighting indifference of his sinful creatures ;—an indifference which will not even listen to his proposals, but on every silly pretext that can suggest itself, turns away from him, and from all who would engage attention to him, even to trifles that, in the comparison, would not weigh the dust of the balance !—Is there no moral evil in this?—nothing for which the thoughtless and busy worldling can be justly called to account?

III. I come now, in the third place, to consider the unbelief of Pride.

This general head divides itself, as I formerly noticed, into a variety of subordinate particulars. Even the two preceding topics of discourse might, perhaps, without impro

priety, have been comprehended underit ;— the one, as the pride of self-will, and the other, as the pride of careless insubordination; and thus all the sources of unbelief might have been reduced, as logicians express it, to one category.-But the descriptions of pride to which I now request your attention come more directly and naturally under this common designation. They are, the pride of wealth and station, the pride of wisdom, and the pride of self-righteousness.

1. The pride of wealth and station.

Christianity fully recognises, and in no respect interferes with, the ordinary established distinctions of civil society: and they sadly mistake its nature, and betray great deficiency of sound judgment and discretion, who act as if it were otherwise; as if the faith and fellowship of the Church of God obliterated the gradations of civil rank, and gave a dispensation from all the usually acknowledged proprieties of life.—But in regard to the provisions of the gospel, the Bible does place all upon a level. The sal

vation which it reveals is, in its nature, its necessity, and its means, the same to all. There is one Bible, that teaches to all the same lessons; one salvation for "high and low, rich and poor together." There are not two Saviours,-one for the rich and another for the poor. There are not two ways to heaven, one for the rich and the other for the poor. There are not two tables spread and furnished, and two descriptions of fare provided; there are not, in a word, two heavens, the one for the rich, and the other for the poor. In the "communion of saints," both below and above, "the rich and the poor meet together: the Lord is the maker," and the Lord is the Saviour, "of them all." Both as sinners, and as saved sinners, they stand on common ground, They are "all one in Christ Jesus." They enjoy the same privileges; they are possessors of the same honours; they acknowledge the same Father and the same Lord; they join in the same worship, the worship of one God, through one Mediator, by one Spirit;

they are debtors to the same mercy, and look forward, on the same ground of hope, to the same everlasting inheritance. In the matter of salvation, from first to last, there is thus a perfect equality.

Now to many, this is offensive. Their pride rises at the thought of being placed on a level with the poorest and the meanest ; of merging all their earthly distinctions, and joining with such in one fellowship, having blessings and privileges in common on the very same footing, children with them of the same family, and anticipating, on the same ground, the same heaven ;—a heaven, where worldly dignities shall be no more,—where riches and birth confer no honour,-where, if they "sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob," they must at the same time sit down with Lazarus.-" God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him." Not a few among the rich and the noble, when they read this and see it realized, associate the religion of the

gospel with the ideas of meanness and vulgarity, and the simple scriptural fellowship of a church of Christ with degradation, from which they shrink with a secret or avowed disdain. They like religion" in her silver slippers ;"-when her observances can be made to accord with the pomps and fashions of the world, when she condescends to take them by the hand according to their rank, and instead of rudely stripping them of every badge of distinction, politely recognises the star and the coronet. They have no objections to the church, when they can be allowed to bring the world into it along with them.

But is there no evil in such feelings?— nothing criminal ?-nothing offensive to God? Is not this the very same temper of mind that discovered itself in the Jews, when they were disgusted at the meanness of the Saviour's birth, and condition, and outward appearance ;-"the Carpenter's Son," instead of the royal leader of the armies of Israel, surrounded with the splen