false. This point is imaginary. There is every gradation of character, from the highest to the lowest. There is no such great chasm at any particular line. All the regeneration which facts and the experience of life exhibit to us, is that of more good actions and less sins than before, and that is a change of moral action, not of moral nature.

But, it may be said, a man must be something or nothing, regenerate or unregenerate, a saint or a sinner, in a state of perdition or salvation. I answer, that this representation arises from gross ideas and false conceptions and analogies. It arises from urging the figure of birth in a point where it was not intended to apply, and from supposing future happiness or misery is to arise from place, not moral condition. Let us bring these conceptions to the test of the word of God. He that "is born of God sinneth not." That is true to the letter. But who arrives at such a degree of perfection as this in the present world? Then no one is fully born in a spiritual sense till he arrives at the perfection of heaven. Regeneration, then, instead of being momentary, embraces the whole Christian course from the beginning to the end.

But what change in the moral nature of man keeps him from sinning, according to this system, after regeneration? It must be a change of some or all the powers concerned in moral action. These are the understanding and moral sense, the passions and appetites, and the will. We have already demonstrated that the will cannot be immediately touched without destroying moral action. The appetites and passions cannot, without de

stroying temptation, and of course moral probation. There remain, then, only the understanding and the moral sense. And these are the very powers which need not miraculous interference. They are the very powers which man can cultivate and strengthen, to any extent, by his own moral actions; and for the cultivation and improvement of which there are provided means as boundless as the universe, and as rich as the unsearchable and inexhaustible stores of divine revelation, and accessible as the everlasting fountain of devotion springing up perpetually in the soul.

We conclude, therefore, that the soul is active, not passive, in the process of spiritual renovation, in being born into the kingdom of heaven.

LECTURE XI.

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY.

ROMANS, I. 16.

"FOR I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST; FOR IT IS THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION TO EVERY ONE THAT BELIEVETH."

WHAT is Christianity? This is the question which I propose this evening to discuss. I am not unaware of the difficulty of defining so wide and general a subject, or compressing that definition into a single discourse. I am not unaware, likewise, of the great variety of answers which might be given to this question, all equally true according to the view taken of it, and the purpose for which it is considered. The answer we shall attempt to give it, will be with reference to this point,-its power over the minds, hearts, and lives of men. What in it are the sources of its moral and spiritual power? Its effect upon mankind was at once great and signal. It immediately formed a community of a character more pure and exalted than the world had ever known. And from that day to this, those who have enjoyed its influence have been distinguished from the rest of the world by a marked superiority of moral, social, and intellectual condition. An effect has been produced. That effect

must have had an adequate cause. That cause is contained in the narrow compass of the New Testament. It is not pretended that there is anything traditionary in our religion. It is all written down in the memoirs of the evangelists and apostles. Does it exceed the powers of the human mind to trace these effects to their causes? In doing this we shall discover what is essential to Christianity, and what is not, a point than which nothing can be more important to settle with certainty and conviction.

It may have seemed, and doubtless has seemed to many honest minds, that in discarding the doctrines we have been discussing, such as the Trinity, original sin, moral inability, vicarious punishment, passive and irresistible regeneration, and their associated doctrines, that we had stripped Christianity of all its peculiar and most precious elements, and made it another Gospel. This impression may be very honest and sincere, and at the same time very erroneous. It It may be that their impressions as to what Christianity is, may have arisen more from habit than examination. They have perhaps been accustomed to hear these doctrines preached as the sum and substance of the Gospel, and have associated with them their religious ideas and feelings. It may be, then, that their belief in these opinions and dogmas, is rather traditionary than derived from the Bible. When they miss their old theological terms and doctrines, when they hear the Gospel stripped of these peculiarities, it may seem another Gospel, not because it is different from the Gospel of the New Testament, but because it is different from the creeds, systems, and inventions of men.

The only way to determine which is the true Gospel, is to compare them both with the preaching of the apostles. We have in the Acts, records of their preaching for thirty years. We have sketches of their sermons on many important occasions, before large bodies of men, both Jews and heathens. We have sermons which were followed by the most signal effects, the conversion of thousands to Christianity, such effects as demonstrated the doctrines taught, whatever they were, to be the true Gospel, which is well characterized in our text as “the power of God unto salvation."

We have every reason to believe that what they taught was the true Gospel, and all that was essential to it, because in the first place they were under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, and in the second place, because it produced the effect, which the Gospel was intended to produce, the moral and spiritual renovation of the hearers, repentance, reformation and obedience. I beseech you, therefore, to follow me with an impartial mind while I examine the preaching of the apostles as recorded in the Acts. And I entreat you, one and all, not only to listen to these lectures with candor, but to imitate the conduct of the noble Bereans, so highly commended by Paul, to search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Neither re

ceive nor reject the doctrines you hear in this place, on human authority, but go to the Bible, and comparing one part with another, endeavor to make a consistent whole.

We shall first examine the first Christian sermon that was ever delivered, and one which was followed by the