thousand excuses for a little longer self-indulgence, saying, as Lot did with respect to Zoar, "Is it not a little one?"* Oh! how numberless are the arts of self-deception. How slowly do we attain to the knowledge of ourselves! Lord increase my faith. Subdue my corruptions. Conquer my stubborn will. Cast me into the mould of the gospel, and make me wholly thine. The danger of self-deception increases in proportion to the magnitude of the thing about which we are deceived. The salvation of the soul is the chief concern of man; to be deceived on this point, is eternally fatal. The Scriptures divide all mankind into two great classes, the spiritually and the carnally minded. The one walk by faith, the other by sight: the one, are the children of God; the other, the children of the devil. The former have their affections set on things above; the latter delight in every thing earthly and sensual; their views are bounded by time; their interests are founded on the shadow of a moment. Strange as it may appear, yet, upon this airy nothing, the men of the world build their hopes, which vanish like the midnight dream. Our Saviour has described by parable, the character and end of the rich worldling.t When the man was promising to himself years of ease and pleasure, the sentence went forth to cut the cumberer down. "Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be required of thee."‡ A reflecting mind, impressed with the value of eternal things, mourns over this infatuation. What man would dare to sleep on the brink of a loose and crumbling precipice; or to stand on the summit of a mast, during the heaving of the vessel in a storm? And yet, thus rash is the man who trusts in his riches, and prides himself on worldly greatness. He leans on a vapour; he grasps a shadow; he sinks into destruction! * Gen. xix. 20. + See Luke xii. 16-21. + Ver. 20. No character is more common than the carnallyminded. It is the character of all the unregenerated part of mankind, whether among Jews, and Heathens, or the baptised members of the visible Church. Actions speak more forcibly than words. They are the test of character. Like fruit upon the tree, they show the nature of the man, while motives, like the sap, are hidden from our view. Faith, producing love and obedience, characterises the trees of righteousness of the Lord's planting; but are these graces of the Spirit to be found in the hearts of the worldly? Do we not there behold, as evidenced by the life, sensuality, and enmity to God? Such persons, if rich, are honoured; if generous, are applauded; if possessed of power, are courted and flattered. But what said our Lord: "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!"* "That which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of God."+ The world is full of such characters, and the visible Church has been contaminated in every age, by men who love filthy lucre, the lust of power, or the lust of the flesh. Paul mourned over a Demas, who loved this present world. John over a Diotrephes, who loved to have the pre-eminence ; § and the early Fathers of the Christian Church, over those who stained by impurity the so-called angelic state of celibacy. The Church of Rome is proverbial for these evils. Oh! that our Reformed Churches may ever shine in the beauty of holiness, and by a weanedness from the world. But alas! the world has crept into the Church. Hence arises the drooping state of our once flourishing vine. Lord look down from heaven, behold and visit this Vine. Water it with the the dew of grace. "Revive thy work in the midst of the years."|| The history of the gospel is chiefly the history + Luke xvi. 15. Luke vi. 26. 2 Tim. iv. 10. I Hab. iii. 2. of Christ's conquest over the spirit of the world. And the number of true Christians, is only the number of those who, following the Spirit of Christ, have lived contrary to the spirit of the world. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."* "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world."+ This is the language of the whole New Testament. This is the mark of Christianity : "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."+ O! my soul, as standing on the borders of eternity, weigh well these things. Seek after heavenly wisdom, to know thyself. Dread self-deception. Prepare to meet thy God. There are a thousand ways whereby we may deceive ourselves. Vices, through the artifice of Satan, are decked with rose-buds, and concealed under specious titles. He puts a fascinating mask upon the face of crime, and thus, like the angler, hides the hook. The wretched sinner, like the silly fish, sees not the snare. Like the maniac, he imagines himself a king, while held in fetters, though his sceptre is a straw! Are not such characters objects of pity? Should they not be subjects for prayer? O! my soul, feel the pulse of thy affections. Do they beat for Christ? Is he thy Portion, thy Eternal All? If so, then the Spirit of Christ and of glory resteth upon thee. God numbers thee amongst his beloved people, his chosen ones, his jewels. But if thou art a stranger to the covenant of grace; if thou art unacquainted with Christ as the hope of glory; if thou hast never felt the plague of inward corruption; if thou hast never come to Christ as a poor heavy laden sinner, nor taken his yoke upon thee; if, in short, thou art not renewed in the spirit of thy mind, striving against sin, crucifying the flesh, renouncing the world, and perfecting holiness in the fear of God; then art thou, however honoured, applauded, or courted by the Rom. viii. 9. + 1 John v. 4. + Col. iii. 3. world, an enemy of God, a child of wrath, an heir of hell! O! thou eternal Spirit of all grace and truth, display thy saving power in my salvation. Convince me of sin. Reveal me to the mighty Saviour. Lead me to the garden of Gethsemane, to the hill of Calvary, that there I may behold the bloody sweat, and hear the dying groans, of my crucified Redeemer. There, in the sacred mount, melt my heart to penitence and love, and make me wholly, and entirely thine. 66 A self-righteous spirit is a spirit of self-delusion. By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”* This is a standing truth of the gospel, which ages cannot alter, though ages past and present have wrought hard to pluck it from the word of life. Who, then, can be saved? The gospel tells us : "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."+ Faith in Christ opens the storehouse of heaven. Faith lays hold on Him who is the Possessor of all things. This is the mighty instrument which baffles all the arts of Satan, and the malice of the world. It shows the sinner to himself, and leads him to his Saviour. When Paul, by faith, beheld the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and himself, as the chief of sinners;‡ when he beheld by faith, the preciousness of Christ, and the fulness, the fitness, and the freeness of his great salvation; he was overwhelmed with the view. Then he renounced his boasted virtues, his legal righteousness, and desired only, that he might win Christ, and be found in him.§ Then he gloried in nothing save in Christ crucified. Then his wish was, to be dissolved, and to be with Christ.** He hasted to the cross, and there, through faith, he washed away his sins. He seized, by faith, the robe of righteousness which his Saviour wrought, and wrapped Gal. ii. 16. Rom. vii. 13.; 1 Tim. i. 15. ** † Acts xvi. 31. § Phil. iii. 8, 9. 2 Cor. v. 1-10.; Phil. i. 21. it round his naked soul. He sought for grace to sanctify him, body, soul, and spirit; to prepare him for sufferings in his Master's service, to preserve him unto eternal glory. He sought and found the blessing. Or, rather, Jesus, in Sovereign Love, sought him out, when hastening on his bloody errand to Damascus,* and made him a vessel of mercy, a monument of grace, "a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." Was Saul, the persecuting murderer, converted into a patient lamb? Then, O sinner, fear not, Jesus ever lives. His grace can also save thee. How wonderful is the operation of grace. The churches of Judea, heard the wonderful story: "He which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And," adds the Apostle, "they glorified God in me."+ God ever gives his witness to the faithful preaching of the gospel, by making it the instrument of turning many to righteousness; and Satan gives his witness to it, by opposing it with all his might. This arch enemy well knows the force and efficacy of preaching the doctrine of the atonement; of a free justification by faith, without the deeds of the law; of the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart; and against such preaching, he plants his artillery. enlists, not only the worldly and profane, the infidel and the sceptic into his service, but also the formalist and the moral; yea, even some in the ministerial office, who, blinded by prejudice, think that they ought, like Saul of Tarsus, to do many things contrary to such preaching as this. He Do not facts attest this painful statement? We never find a moral preacher derided by the world; neither do we see a moral preacher bringing souls to Christ. He may, by dint of eloquence, arrest the profligate in his course, and lead him to a momentary reflection; but all his powers of rhetoric cannot change his heart. |