the cause of their failure, may be clearly seen, if we look,

Thirdly, at the confirmation which a consideration of man's state and nature furnishes to this great truth.

When, then, we watch the mass of men, in any age or state of life, we may see one general feature pervading it; and that is, a restless dissatisfaction. And now look a little closer into this restlessness, and see whence it springs. It evidently arises from some universal cause, because it haunts all men: the man that has more, or the man that has less, of the common good things of life; breaking out, in the one, in a weary loathing of abundance; in the other, in a hungry appetite after possessing,— but still there in each. It springs, then, from this, that these outward things are not enough to give satisfaction to the mind; that the mind craves after something that can satisfy it; that it looks within, and is not satisfied; without, and it is darkness around it. This is the universal disorder; and what is its secret cause? It is the unconscious reaching forth of MAN after that God, who alone can fill and satisfy his soul, but from whom sin separates him. And because philosophy and morals have no cure for this, they can but trifle with man. All their declarations of the purity of God do but exasperate the conscience of him who feels sin within himself, who finds sin so inwrought and entwined in his moral nature, that he cannot tell

whether or no it be a part of himself— which is the certainty of damnation,-or whether it be, in any way, and if so in what way, separable from himself. The more light breaks in, whilst it is mere moral light, the more destroying becomes the inner struggle; until, when the soul sees and consents to the beauty of the law of holiness, whilst it groans under the indwelling law of corruption, it can only cry out in its agony, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" And this is, in truth, the condition of those to whom our message is sent they have each one within them this great mystery of conscience; more or less quickened, but, at the least, testifying in an aching dissatisfaction, if it is not tearing them in the convulsions of despair. For, in the commonest forms of humanity, this is what a watchful eye may trace under unnumbered concealments: he may see man ignorant of his true greatness, ignorant of his true littleness, yet with a strange, wild consciousness of both,' and so continually the sport of those pent-up and struggling powers which are bursting forth into destruction until they are tamed and ordered by a heavenly wisdom.

:

Now this nature and this struggle are in every unrenewed man amongst our flocks. O, then, how can we doubt for a moment as to the true mode of addressing them! Reason with them on

1 Rom. vii. 24.

morals, and you vex the already wounded conscience, until it festers anew. Prepare them for your message, and you trifle with their utter misery : nay, that sin and that misery has prepared them for it. Preach unto them "Jesus and the resurrection;" the Saviour and life from the dead : bring them the "word of reconciliation;" shew them, in the thick darkness around them, the form of God as of a gracious Father; a hand stretched out in mercy, not in wrath: tell them that the struggle within is between the sin which Christ has slain and the conscience God has implanted; that the sin is no part of themselves; that it may be, that it shall be, cast out, from every one that believes in Christ: and you do indeed heal the broken heart; and you teach the soul that was bemoaning itself, with a "who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" to take up the song of triumph, and indeed to "thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

"2

So that Holy Scripture, constant experience, and right reason, bring us to the same conclusion ; that bringing out before our people the blessed message of atonement, through the blood of Christ, is to be the LEADING FEATURE of our ministry, if we would have it full of the great power of God.

And now let us for a moment weigh the chief objections which have been urged against this truth; which is all the more needful, because 1 Acts xvii. 18. 2 Rom. vii. 24, 25.

it is not only from men of a low and worldly standard, who seek thereby to justify a course of practice, into which cold-heartedness has led them, but also from high and devout minds, that they have of late been heard.

First, then, we are told that the law of God's dealings, and of our blessed Master's teaching, has ever been to reserve for some prepared hearts such wonderful discoveries.

Now, granting this assertion to the full, what does it prove? Nothing, we may see at once, unless it can be shewn that the bearer of a message has the same discretionary power with him who sends it. The infinite wisdom of our God determines what shall be 'revealed,' and what be covered:' but we have no such discretion; we are simply bearers of a message, and woe unto us if we mar its clearness, through any fancied rule of acting as our Lord has done. So that all such analogies are set aside at once: our rule is, not what we think we gather from God's doings, but what we know that we receive from God's command; about which there can be little question. For even when reserving much Himself, our blessed Master taught us that "what He had spoken in the ear, we were to proclaim on the house-top ;" that the time was coming when parables should no more wrap up the truth, but when He, through us, should "shew" men "plainly of the Father;" when His apostles

should preach in His name among all nations "repentance and remission of sins."

But, again, we are told, that there is a want of reverence in speaking openly and often of our Lord's atonement. God forbid that any one should thus sin against the marvellous goodness of the Lord. But how can it be irreverent to speak of the Lord Jesus, the Mediator between God and man, and yet reverent to speak of the awful majesty of the Father? and yet this is not forbidden us; on the contrary, we are told to prepare men for hearing of the atonement, by awakening in their minds a due sense of the terrors of the Lord: a direction which destroys, therefore, the objection to support which it is urged.

Again, we are told, that Christian antiquity did not so. Now there is a right reverence for Christian antiquity, which let no man withhold. But he that makes it into an idol, debases and dishonours what he seems to exalt; and he does make it into an idol, who sets it up above any light or any truth which God has given to his Church. Let it be our wisdom, indeed, as we have opportunity, to catch every ray which shone upon the earlier times: but if there be light, as doubtless there is, ever flashing out, according to the Church's need, from the great gift of living truth in God's Holy Word, let us not lose this, through a wilful refusal to believe that it is light, unless we find it expressly visible

1 Luke xxiv. 47.