any thing for you in the work of your personal preparations for the bar of God? My Bible teaches me that he who is not for Christ is against him; and when I hear such men as St. Paul and his associates talking about the difficulty of salvation-when I look on the fervor of the primitive disciples-when I see the earnest and prayerful anxieties which swell a Christian's bosom, in every age-I cannot help thinking, that something of the same spirit must be ours, if we are ever hailed by the ascended Redeemer among the future worshippers of his glory. Why, then, my brethren, stand we here all the day idle ? If there be any thing to be done, do it quickly. The sand that measures our flight to the eternal world is rapidly wasting, and the shadows of the grave are deepening over our path as we pass along. Come and enter your names in the career of immortality. Come and put on the armor of experimental religion, and enlist under the banners of Jesus Christ. Come to him. Leave every pride of intellect, and every impulse of self-confidence behind you, and find in his blood and beneath his Cross, that all-renovating principle which can make you wise unto salvation. Amen.

SERMON XIV.

"For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

James, ii., 10.

ALL of us who read the Bible, are aware that it divides mankind into two great classes, the righteous and the wicked. Between these it allows no amalgamation. Every individual who loveth God, be his standing or be his attainments never so mean, falls on the one side; and every individual, graced with no matter how many accomplishments, who loveth not God, falls on the other side of the line of separation. This, I know, is a principle which the men of this world are apt to disrelish. They are informed, that in the sight of God there are but two kinds of character. How strange, how mysterious, when, in their own sight, every day, they find one hundred kinds of character, from the very worst to the very best,-from the lowest debasement up to the most high and honorable elevation. The assassin, say they, is regarded with horror, and the debauchee is treated with coldness, and the victim of imprudence is looked upon with pity; and then, again, the man of integrity and good feeling commands respect. Surely these different persons are not all on a level. But when we come to open the Bible, we discover but one grand distinction applied to the whole of this vast variety of character, and that is, the single distinction between the righteous and the wicked.

Now, my hearers, as we have a text to-day which brings us upon the subject, it is proper, in the outset, to inquire how far the Bible teaches, and how far it does not, the doctrine which I have just said is charged upon it by the world. The truth is, it establishes the most delicate and inviolable distinction between the different grades of character. It never has thrown, and never will throw, honor and virtue upon a level with meanness and vice. But one thing it has done, it has made love to God an indispensable prerequisite to a seat in the kingdom of God. It does not put the gentleman on a par with the vagabond, nor an honest man on a par with a knave; but it says to every one of them, separately, You must be a Christian. In a word, it pronounces us all sinners, and calls on us to make Jesus Christ our friend. And till we have done this, no matter what else we may do, it attaches to each of us, the poor man and the rich man, the man of honor and the man of meanness, a great moral defect, which can be remedied only by one and the same application.

In the words of the text, there is something at first sight extremely mysterious. They seem to imply, that a man, by committing one crime, must of course incur the guilt and the punishment of all other crimes. To avoid this difficulty, some, by altering a letter in the Greek, have made the passage to read, "Whosoever shall offend in one point is undoubtedly guilty." This opinion might be satisfactory, were it not grounded on a deviation from the original, which every body confesses no Greek MSS. will justify. Others have supposed that a man, by committing one sin, is in fact guilty of all, because he opposes the authority by which all are forbidden. But this, instead of removing, increases the embarrassment, for no man can justly be condemned for one crime when he has committed another, merely because he violates the law which prohibits both. Such a principle would extinguish the very idea of law. For myself, I think the meaning of the passage to be this : The Jews had a favorite opinion, that if their virtues ex

ceeded their vices-if they kept more of the commandments than they broke-they would be saved. Against their pernicious theology the apostle James has levelled the whole of this epistle. He informs them that they could not keep part of the commandments, and break the rest, for the only true way to keep any, was from a desire to please God; and if they had that desire at all, it would make them as anxious to keep all the commandments as any one of them. He tells them that their conduct was not acceptable, from its mechanical accommodation to the Bible, but from the motive which led to it,-love to God, and a paramount solicitude for His glory. Then comes the text, "Whosoever shall offend in one point, he is guilty of all;" or, in other words, if a man will consent, deliberately, to commit one known sin, it does not prove that he has committed any other particular sin; but it proves, that whatever his actions may have been, his motives have not been holy, because his heart has not felt the love of God. A man cannot love God, who is willing, with his eyes open, to violate the least of His laws, or bring the least dishonor on His attributes. This is the doctrine we have now before us. And here it is that we come back to the remark made a moment ago : that the men of the world complain of the Bible, because it sweeps them all, without regard to the opinions of society, under the general class of the wicked.

But if we examine the case with candor, my hearers, we shall find the Bible entirely just in this classification. I can conceive of a man upright and honest, and honorable, and at the same time without one particle of religious principle belonging to him. And what judgment, you will ask, is to be pronounced upon him? Why, undoubtedly, I give him credit for all his virtues, and the world gives him credit, and we pay him the tribute of our love and our respect; and the Bible certainly does not charge upon him sins

which he never committed. On the contrary, it merely presses home to him the single question, whether, with all his virtues, and all his accomplishments, he is not ignorant of that love to God which the Bible has required of him?

Who, my hearers, is this man of honor and integrity, so little deserving the name of wicked? One, I answer, who redeems his word, and does no injury to his fellow, and maintains an unsullied reputation. But all this time, the least feeling of piety need not appertain to him. He may be an occasional swearer, or he may revenge an insult with murder, or he may now and then indulge in a moderate debauch. At all events, he may or may not believe the Bible, or believe in a God. Still, he is a man of honor, and the world calls it unjust that the Bible should place him so far on a level with the knave, as to say equally to both of them, "You must be a Christian before you enter the kingdom of Heaven." I admit, if a man adhere to the rules of integrity and honor, for the sake of pleasing his God, the case would be different; but the only evidence I can have of this is, that he should do every thing in his whole life for the sake of pleasing God. He must leave off his swearing, and his proud spirit must become like his Saviour's, and he must be a man of prayer and of holiness. Then it is that he gives evidence of a heart anxious, above all things, to perform the will of the Most High when and wherever it is made clear to him. But so long as he lives in the commis. sion of any one known sin, he proves, beyond a doubt, that he does not hate sin, because God hateth it. He may be upright and generous, and just; but, though he should keep the whole law, and yet habitually offend in one point, he proves that his virtues have resulted from something very different from love to God, and, therefore, that in the sight of God they are regarded accordingly. His correct and honorable course of life has been dictated by the opinions