cometh unto the Father but by the Son,-and that his is the only name given under heaven whereby men can be saved,--and that he will be magnified only in the appointed Mediator, -and that Christ is all in all,-and that there is no other foundation on which man can lay, and that he who believeth on him shall not be confounded. He further speaks of our personal preparation for heaven--and here, too, may his utterance sound mysteriously in your hearing, as he tells that without holiness no man can see God, and that we are without strength while we are without the Spirit to make us holy -and that unless a man be born again he shall not enter into the kingdom of God,—and that he should wrestle in prayer for the washing of regeneration, and that he should watch for the Holy Ghost with all perseverance,--and that he should aspire at being perfect through Christ strengthening him,--and that he should, under the operation of those great provisions which are set up in the New Testament for creating us anew unto good works, conformi himself unto that doctrine of grace by which he is brought to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present evil world. We again ask them, if all this be offensive to their taste, and utterly revolting to their habits and inclinations, and if they turn with disgust from the bitterness of such an application, and can behold no strength to constrain them in any such arguments, and no eloquence to admire in them. With what discernment truly is your case taken up in this very Bible, whose phraseology and whose doc

trine are so unpalatable to you, when it tells us of the preaching of the cross being foolishness,--but remember that it says it is foolishness to those who perish; when it tells of the natural man not receiving of the things of the Spirit--but remember that it says, if ye have not the Spirit of God, ye are none of his; when it tells of the gospel being hid,—but hid to them who are lost: "In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of those which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."

Secondly, let us assure the men, who at this moment bid the stoutest defiance to the message of the gospel,-the men whose natural taste appears to offer an invincible barrier against the reception of its truths,--the men who, upon the plea of mysteriousness, or the plea of fanaticism, or the plea of excessive and unintelligible peculiarity, are most ready to repudiate the whole style and doctrine of the New Testament,-let us assure them that the time may yet come, when they shall render to this very gospel the most striking of all acknowledgments, even by sending to the door of its most faithful ministers, and humbly craving from them their explanations and their prayers. It indeed offers an affecting contrast to all the glory of earthly prospects, and to all the vigour of confident and rejoicing health, and to all the activity and enterprise of business, when the man who made the world his theatre, and felt his mountain to stand strong on the fleeting foundation of its enjoyments

and its concerns,-when he comes to be bowed down with infirmity, or receives from the trouble within, the solemn intimation that death is now looking to him in good earnest: When such a man takes him to the bed of sickness. and he knows it to be a sickness unto death,

when, under all the weight of breathlessness and pain, he listens to the man of God, as he points the way that leadeth to eternity,—what, would ask, is the kind of gospel that is most fitted to charm the sense of guilt and the anticipations of vengeance away from him? Sure we are, that we never in these affecting circumstances-through which you have all to passwe never saw the man who could maintain a stability, and a hope, from the sense of his own righteousness; but who, if leaning on the righteousness of Christ, could mix a peace and an elevation with his severest agonies. We never saw the expiring mortal who could look with an undaunted eye on God as his lawgiver; but often has all its languor been lighted up with joy at the name of Christ as his Saviour. We never saw the dying acquaintance, who, upon the retrospect of his virtues and of his doings, could prop the tranquillity of his spirit on the expectation of a legal reward. Ono! this is not the element which sustains the tranquillity of death beds. It is the hope of forgiveness. It is a believing sense of the efficacy of the atonement. It is the prayer of faith, offered up in the name of him who is the Captain of all our salvation. It is a dependence on that power which can alone impart a meetness for the inheritance of the saints, and present the spirit

holy, and unreproveable, and unblameable, in the sight of God.

You

Now, what we have to urge is, that if these be the topics, which, on the last half hour of your life, are the only ones that will possess, in your judgment, any value or substantial importance, why put them away from you now? will recur to them then, and for what? that you may get the forgiveness of your sins. But there is a something else you must get, ere you can obtain an entrance into peace or glory. You must get the renovation of that nature, which is so deeply tainted at this moment with the guilt of ingratitude and forgetfulness towards God. This must be gone through ere you die; and say if a change so mighty should be wantonly postponed to the hour of dying?— when all your refusals of the gospel have hardened and darkened the mind against it; when a demonstration of the Spirit then, is surely not to be counted on, as the return that you will experience for resisting all his intimations now; when the effects of the alienation of a whole life, both in extinguishing the light of your conscience, and in riveting your distaste for holiness, will be accumulated into such a barrier in the way of your return to God, as stamps upon death-bed conversions, a grievous unlikelihood, and should givé an imperious force to the call of "To-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts, seeing that now is your accepted time, and now is your day of salvation."

SERMON III.

THE PREPARATION NECESSARY FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOSPEL.

MATTHEW Xiii. 11, 12.

"He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."

It is of importance to mark the principle of distribution on which it is given to some to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and it is not given to others. Both may at the outset be equally destitute of a clear understanding of these mysteries. But the former may have what the latter have not. With the former there may be a desire for explanation; with the latter there may be no such desire. The former may, in the earnest prosecution of this desire, be praying earnestly, and reading diligently, and striving laboriously, to do all that they know to be the will of God. With the latter, there may be neither the habit of prayer, nor the habit of inquiry, nor the habit of obe