not expect miracles when they have nothing to do but to form correct notions and discharge incumbent duties.

I cannot conclude without entreating you to give more and more of your attention to the important effect which the principles of Christ, sincerely adopted, will have upon the character of man. How will they elevate his conceptions of the everblessed God, in his overruling providence, in his never-exhausted mercy, in his awful and unerring justice, in that goodness which time and eternity can never fully display nor exhaust! How will they dignify man in his pursuits, making him not confine his attention to the things of this life, guarding him against the base tendency of all those theories which would make sordid wealth or worldly pleasures and honours the only rational objects of the attention of a being who is hourly likely to lose them, and to mingle with the dust! How beautiful is the character of Christ himself! There, if you have ambition, is something worthy of its aspirations; there, if you long for happiness, is the way to secure it; there, if you would be useful, is the model of him "who did no evil," and went about doing good! It is, indeed, necessary that we should devote more of our time and thoughts to those sacred subjects, that the true work of regeneration may be accomplished in us; that men may be constrained to see, by the tenor of our lives, the Christian and philosophic elevation which we may attain;

and that our principles, divine in their origin, may be proved to have such a heavenly source, by their effect upon our lives. This earnestness will lead to no enthusiasm but that which it is noble to feel; for the understanding is as dead as the heart is cold of him who does not see that it is good to be zealously affected in a good cause. And the cause of piety most pure and sublime, of virtue most enlarged and refined, of candour most unrestrained, and of benevolence that grasps the whole world, is that good cause which Christ established to purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.

DISCOURSE XVII.

CHARACTER PERFECTED BY SUFFERING.

HEBREWS ii. 10:

FOR IT BECAME HIM, FOR WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND BY WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, IN BRINGING MANY SONS TO GLORY, TO MAKE THE CAPTAIN OF THEIR SALVATION PERFECT THROUGH

SUFFERING.

EVERY thing proves that man in this world is placed in a state of trial and discipline. There are around him the means of improvement corresponding to the capacities for improvement which are placed within him. He is left to the option of a choice which, according as it fixes, either guides him to good, or leaves him, amidst the good, a melancholy prey to evil. Warring motives assail him; and as they influence, his character gradually unfolds. If the best and noblest prevail, he rises rapidly in the scale of intellectual and moral worth; if those which are low and sensual predominate, how inevitable is his fall! Other animals are guided unerringly by instinct to the determined purpose

of their existence. At the first independent efforts they are as perfect as in the last; but man is more exposed the more independent he becomes; and perfection, if it come at last, or is nearly reached, is the great work of his life. He was evidently placed here to be tried, and by being tried to be formed. So situated, we see something of the end of that disposition of things which otherwise would appear an inexplicable riddle. Hence we learn why pleasures which men naturally covet become snares and temptations; why affections and passions require restraint, controul, and guidance; why we are surrounded with the greatest advantages and are able to neglect them; why suffering exists amongst the happy works of God, and man is born to trouble, and has to contend and struggle through life, and has to encounter evil and difficulty, and the inexperience of youth and the infirmity of age, and to submit to a painful, often to a lingering death.

The absolute necessity of discipline to a being possessing such progressive powers as are enjoyed by man, is illustrated by the effect which we see this discipline produce; by the nature of virtue and vice; by the natural accountability which we feel through life, and by the awful responsibility which we cannot escape in the life to come.

Jesus is called in the text, "the captain of our salvation," which means that he is our guide and director as the author of that dispensation of divine truth by which salvation, in the most extensive and

perfect sense of the word, is secured.

And while the language of the apostle is as laudatory as affection could prompt, aware of his true nature, unmixed and not differing from our own, he states the purpose of God to be to make him perfect, triumphant over all evil, successful in attaining every good at which he aimed, by the same treatment by which he forms us all graciously to obey him, and to secure the happiness we covet. "It pleased him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, to make the captain of our salvation perfect through suffering." This discipline took place in the accomplishment of the great work to which his life was consecrated, " in bringing many sons," many of the human race, who are, in language of strong affection, propriety, and beauty, called "sons of God,"-in bringing many sons of God to glory. He did this by removing the necessity of those sacrifices which had, for ceremonial purposes, existed under the Jewish law, and by the sacrifice of himself, offering at one time a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, which annihilated the custom of presenting victims to purify the worshiper who believed in Jesus in approaching the throne of grace. And while his death is thus viewed by an accommodation which the sacred writers were led to adopt to make the Jews understand that the true worshipers are those who worship the Father in spirit and in truth, we must sadly mistake the nature of this representation if we suppose it to intimate any thing like a