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ing not the power of God, which has sown us in dishonour to be raised in glory, which has sown us a natural body to be raised a spiritual body, influences and corrupts the tenour and conduct of our lives. We are carnal; our ideas, our wishes are confined to this life; we picture to ourselves a heaven in conformity with them, and neglect the only means by which we may prepare ourselves for that spiritual kingdom which the Scriptures set before us. "We do err, not knowing the Scriptures, or the power of God." Let us then consider, my brethren, how we may apply this rebuke of our Lord. Not only in our conceptions of heaven, but in our knowledge of the spirit of the Gospel, how far do we err from the truth! Like the Sadducees, we amuse ourselves with idle questions and useless disputes, while the real question at issue, the salvation of our souls, and our improvement in spiritual holiness is neglected. There are contentions and divisions among us; and what do they prove, but that, as the apostle says,

we are carnal; we are treating the Gospel as a mere question of worldly wisdom, instead of finding in it that power of God, which raises and spiritualizes our thoughts, and leads us in this matter of our common salvation to be of one mind. To be carnally minded, saith the apostle, is death; to be spiritually minded, is life and peace. Let us then endeavour, my brethren, so to read the Gospel, that we may advance daily more and more, not in the know ledge of the letter, but of the Spirit, that it may influence all our thoughts and actions, and by purifying and spiritualizing our lives, prepare us for the enjoyment of that spiritual happiness, which is proposea to us in the world to come.

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SERMON XIV.

GALATIANS, I. 23-24.

"They had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed, and they glorified God in me."

THE season approaching when the great event alluded to in the text is commemorated by our church, I am anxious to avail myself of the opportunity of directing your attention to it. There is so much in the history of St. Paul that cannot fail to be interesting to the Christian, and so strong an evidence is afforded us in his conversion, and subsequent

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Christ, that no part of his character or history can be viewed with indifference. He tells us, in this address to the Galatians, that the only report which the churches of Judea had heard of him was, that he which persecuted them in times past, that he who had been the principal agent of the persecution they sustained at the hands of the Jews, who had been present at the death of the first martyr, Stephen, and encouraged his oppressors; who had gone with a commission from the chief priests to Antioch, to punish any who might be found calling on the name of Jesus; that this same persecutor and zealot in the service of the Pharisees, having been stopped in the midst of his wicked career, by the miraculous interference of God, and at once converted and convinced, now preached boldly, both to Jew and Gentile, that faith which once he had destroyed; and that in consequence those who had hitherto dreaded his name, and fled from his approach, now seeing the miraculous conversion that had taken

place, ascribed the glory of this merciful change to the interference of God, and instead of an enemy and persecutor, hailed an apostle and a brother, in the once dreaded Saul of Tarsus. Such is the account he gives us of himself, and refers us for fuller particulars to those passages in which, as a matter of history, or of judicial defence, his conversion is fully related. In the opening of his history, we find him endowed with high privileges, and selected and honoured, when yet a young man, as the champion of the Pharisees, at that time the ruling party among the Jews. Among his own nation, he was of unspotted lineage, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and of consequence and rank among them, as a favoured and gifted disciple of Gamaliel, the most eminent of the rabbis. As such, he was selected as their leader; powers were delegated to him, and their forces entrusted to him. On the other hand, among the rulers of his people, he possessed the highest privilege that could be then attained; he was a Roman citizen,

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