might as well expect the Ethiopian to change his skin, or the leopard his spots, as that we should subdue our deepseated distaste for the spirituality of religion. Hope may flatter, sin may deceive, and conscience may indulge us, but we are missing our aim, till we apply to the renovating power of the New Testament. Jesus Christ has offered to take the work of our regeneration into his own hands, and no man living, who has applied to him in earnest, has ever been disappointed. He is strong when we are weak, and he is able when we are helpless, and he can rescue us, and is willing to rescue us, when, left to ourselves, we should perish forever.

In the last place: I have said that Christianity alone, by providing a mediator between God and the sinner, has secured to all who trust in the merits of Christ, the reward of eternal salvation. It is true, indeed, the idea of mediation did not originate in the Bible. So far as I know, it is familiar in the concerns of religion, to every country, and every period. All the apotheoses of Heathen mythology, all the demons of the Grecian and Roman schools, and all the reputed divinities of modern Paganism, are only so many ideal mediators in the court of Heaven. Indeed, when we confine ourselves to the range of our own everyday observations, when we see one class of persons rely. ing on the intercession of angels and saints, and another on the innocence, uprightness, and morality of their lives, and a third, if you please, on the warmth of their zeal, and the vigor of their efforts, in the service of Christ, in all these cases we but discover the different forms of a fancied mediation. All of them tend to one and the same point-the invention of some method for reconciling God to man. But when we come to open the New Testament, a scene is presented entirely new. Heathen atonement, self-righteous confidence, and fanatical presumption are stript of their plausibility, and exhibited in all their native repugnance to the character of Jehovah. One great Saviour stands revealed, who has borne our sins, who has carried our sorrows, who has taken our nature that he might suffer, and retained a Divine nature that his sufferings might avail, and who, amidst all the anguish and agonies of the Cross, has become the mediator of the new covenant for the salvation of every believer. This is the intelligence which the Bible brings us, and the Bible alone. It is the good tidings of great joy which have come down from the primitive Christians to us, and are making their way in triumph over every scheme which reason had devised before, or pride has suggested since. There is a name now given under Heaven among men, whereby they may be saved, and that is the name of Jesus of Nazareth. There is a voice issuing from the throne of God, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price." There is a promise gone forth, and the perfections of the Almighty are pledged to perform it it has cheered many a trial, and dispersed many a doubt, and illumined many a tear; and it is ringing through the sanctuary this very day, in our hearing, "Whosoever cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Surely, if we are sinners, if we are covered with the leprosy of an aggravated and unutterable guilt, if the God who presides over the high and awful retributions of eternity, is holding the tremendous curse of His law in reserve for the obduracy of final impenitence; if all this be true, the news of a mediator, such as ours, so merciful and so free, ought to awaken the loudest song of our praise. No wonder that the virgin should be accosted with the triumphant salutation, "Hail thou that art highly favored"; and no wonder that the angels of Heaven should shout over the plains of Bethlehem the sublime and impressive anthem, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men."

Such, my hearers, are the great doctrines of Christianity, which are peculiar to themselves. Such are some of the blessings which it has led along with it into the lives, the hearts, the hopes of mankind. Now lay your hands on your bosoms, and say, if the provision of an atonement for sin, the offer of the Holy Spirit, and the assurance of an accepted mediator, say if these be not indeed good tidings of great joy? I know, if you were called upon to answer this moment, you would unanimously answer, Yes. But that is not exactly what I want. I wish to know how, if I take you at your word, I am to account for the languor, the apathy, the death-like stillness which I see, and every body sees, on the subject of religion? Take away the public worship of the sanctuary, and what think you would be left to remind us that Jesus Christ had ever lived, or ever died, or ever provided for our future salvation? Demolish our churches, and then put down a heathen in the heart of our population, and how long might he remain there without once suspecting that we believed in a Redeemer, who had shed his heart's blood under the most painful and distressing circumstances, to rescue us from death? Might he not tarry with us year after year, and enter into our families, and converse intimately with ourselves; and, if he should dis. cover that we were not heathen, like himself, would it not be by observing in us the want of every thing like heathen zeal or devotion?

Perhaps I mistake the matter, but just look around you, my hearers, and what do you find? Every thing but religion sought after, every thing but religion talked about, every thing but religion thought of. Go seriously into your own hearts. Is Jesus Christ formed there the hope of glory? Are your affections placed on things above? Do you really love your God more than you love the world? Have you found, or are you now finding, your happiest hours in your closets, and on your knees?

What more shall I say? Another Christmas has come around, and seen us, perhaps, further from the Cross of Cal. vary than the last. Another year is almost gone. It has carried away with it hundreds of our acquaintances and friends to the judgment seat. It has seen many of us who survive restored from the dangers of sickness, and spared a little longer; but, perhaps, it leaves us as it found us, unreconciled to God, and unprepared for eternity. There is somewhere in the Bible these passages, " My spirit shall not always strive with man," and "He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."

My hearers, have you ever seen the lightning of heaven strike? Have you remarked that it gave no warning of its approach? Have you observed that the flash, the roar, and the rain, were all the work of an instant? "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."

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SERMON XVI.

"Walk in wisdom towards them that are without."

Colossians, iv., 5.

PERHAPS there never was a man whose deportment corresponded more exactly with his profession, than did the apostle Paul's. Soon after completing his studies, preparatory to public life, he embraced the Christian religion; and from that period, every solicitude and every effort appeared to be absorbed in the vocation wherewith he was called. Not only did he feel the Gospel himself-not only did he evince his attachment to its doctrines by an example too pure and too consistent even for his enemies to impeachbut he enjoined on all the followers of Christ the same purity. He instructed them to exemplify in practice the faith they had professed to espouse, and the temper they were bound to cherish; in a word, he taught them, instead of impeding Christianity by conduct, incompatible with its spirit, to walk in wisdom before the world-to live down the ridicule, the reproach, and the opposition marshalled against it-to maintain that sacred consistency of character which wit, if it assailed, could not depreciate, and calumny, if it reached, could not impair. This is precisely the sentiment of the text. The expression " towards them that are without," seems to regard the Church as a kind of enclosure; the same idea, probably, to which a more recent date has given the name of "the Pale of the Church." Around this enclosure, the unregenerate are supposed to stand, watching the Christian's career-scrutinizing his movements-magnifying his defects-and leaning, if I may say so, over the walls, to detect every foible, every infirm