see that accomplishment, and beauty, and loveliness, devoted to the decorations of dress, and bewildered by the pursuit of amusement, which might be bending over the couch of decrepitude and pain, and cheering the loneliness of unbe. friended poverty, and consoling the distress of helpless and desponding widowhood, and instructing the ignorance of unprotected orphanage, and wiping the tear from the cheek of affliction, and pointing the eye of the expiring sufferer to the rest that remaineth for the people of God; when I find men of intelligence and talents, men who can so easily inform the mind, and interest the feelings, and captivate the heart; when I see them absorbed in the concerns of the world, with not a prayer to raise to their Saviour, not even a tear to shed over his sufferings, and apparently as unmoved and secure as if they had made a compromise with God; and when I see the poor, the humble, the illiterate of both sexes, looking up to their superiors, watching all their movements, and moulded, especially in sin, by their examples, O, I cannot repress the recollection that there is a judgment to come, when the rich and the poor meet together, and when God, in the presence of an assembled universe, will verify His declaration, that " to whom much has been given, of him will much be required."

Felix trembled. Felix was a man, but the hardihood of his character gave way. He was an heathen; he had never sat under the droppings of the sanctuary, but he had a conscience. Drusilla was a woman, but the tenderness of her sex remained unmelted. She was a Jewess. She had been cradled in the principles of religion, but she heard the preacher without emotion, and without remorse. Felix trembled ; and we learn in the sequel that he sent the apostle away. How inconsistent is guilt. If he disbelieved what his prisoner said, why did he tremble? And if he believed it, why did he send him away? Because that prisoner had

penetrated to the very core of his heart; he had laid it open to his view, festering in all the gangrene rottenness of unrepented sin, and then he had followed up the alarming disclosure by drawing aside the veil from the invisible world, and revealing the Judge of quick and dead, armed with the retributions of eternity. No wonder he should tremble. Here it is that the slumbering conscience awakes from its lethargy. Here it begins to smother its own remonstrances, to stifle the struggling convictions of guilt, to dispute every inch of ground with the Spirit of God. Here it is that impenitence begins to startle at its own security. When the painted shadows of deceit have flitted from the world, and left it undisguised, in all its emptiness and all its deformity, the soul recoils from its embrace, and shudders at the dangers it discloses. How often has this mysterious power of conscience humbled the proudest self-righteousness into the dust. How often has it prostrated the hostility of the carnal heart, and animated its ruins with the activity of Christian love! How often has it arrested the career of debauchery and vice, and led the sinner to the Cross on which his Saviour expired! Go to that secure and contented moralist, who has begun to feel the grasp of the Holy Spirit. Ask him if he yet reposes on his own merit. Inquire if he is still clinging to the tranquillity of self-righteous confidence. No; he lies like a criminal at the feet of Jesus. He sobs out the confession of his guilt, and pleads for mercy, and mercy alone. Follow the awakened worldling into the seclusion of solitude. See him inventing expedients to drown his reflections. Hear that groan, which bursts through the artificial gaiety of his appearance, and betrays the concealment of inward suffering; or, perhaps, in some moment of thoughtful solemnity, when no mortal eye can witness his humiliation, he bends his stubborn knee, and lifts an half-reluctant prayer to his Saviour. Go to the death-bed of the

infidel. What is it that has silenced his blasphemy and profaneness? What has thrown that anxious, and inquiring, and dissatisfied look into his dying eye? What makes that icy chill of horror to shiver along his arteries, when he feels that he is going, and the brink of eternity seems to break under his feet? This is none other than the majesty of Heaven's truth; it is the power of conscience. And, my hearers, could not some of us, if we would, attest the invincibility of its influence? Could we not tell of the solemn hour, when, retired from the temptations of company and mirth, some still small voice has whispered in our ears, that we were born for eternity? Could we not tell of the time when the fresh grave of a parent or a child, a brother or a sister, has sent forth the almost audible admonition, "Be ye also ready?" Could we not tell of the hour when our sins were arrayed against us; when the distance seemed almost annihilated between us and the judgment, and the soul shrunk into the dust before an holy God? Could we not tell of some sermon that had invaded our security, some solitude that had witnessed our tears, some sickness or danger that had recorded our resolutions of repentance? And, perhaps, even while I speak it, these recollections are rising before us, and we are urging them back, we are forbidding them to recount the promises we have broken, and the mercies we have abused, we are ascribing to animal weakness the unwelcome impressions of the Holy Ghost. Who knoweth but some of us are at this very moment rallying all the hardihood of impenitence to crush the convictions of guilt, to brave down the painful story of our sins, to silence the remonstrances of conscience, till we can once more return to the world, and forget that we were made for immortality? Felix trembled, and sent the apostle away. God only knows whether he has seen him since! Let us tremble; butAmen.

You will understand the rest.

SERMON III.

"He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself." 1 John v. 10.

ST. JOHN, my brethren, was the last of the apostles. Before his death, which was nearly seventy years subsequent to our Saviour's, the infant Church was corrupted by heresies, to an alarming extent. On these the venerable old man had long fixed his eye. He was anxious to counteract and arrest them. He saw how rapidly they were spreading. He felt the solemn obligations which rested upon him as the only surviving member of the family of With such inducements, therefore, he took up his pen in the decline of life, and wrote the epistle from which we have selected our text. Among other topics of discussion, we find in the 5th chapter, the subject of faith introduced. This was the basis of the Gospel, the key-stone of the arch; if men were right here, they might with comparative safety be wrong elsewhere. But to be radically wrong here, was certain perdition. Because St. Paul says, "It is by faith we are justified." And so says St. John, in the commencement of this chapter, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." But what does he mean by believeth, which is also a very important word in our text? Does he intend a blind assent of the mind to something of which it has no proof? No-our Creator has never required us to credit anything, without sufficient reason; and if such a sentiment were found within the lids of the Bible, it would go to prove more than the strongest argument ever yet invented, that it could not be the word

of God. Does the apostle hold out the idea, that faith consists in being convinced by what are commonly called the evidences of Christianity? Certainly not; for to believe in this way, was required by candor and common sense, no less than by religion. There were then, as there have been ever since, multitudes of such believers, who were notoriously wicked. So that, although this faith was necessary to a pious man, it was not peculiar to a pious man. besides, through the whole of what St. John has here spoken of saving faith, he has not hinted at the evidences of Christianity external, internal, or collateral. Instead of this, he deems it enough to affirm, that "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." “ If,” says

66

And

he, we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself." As if he had said, "we are bound, undoubtedly, to credit suitable testimony, when coming from men; but there is an evidence higher than this: when we possess saving faith on the Son of God, we shall have a witness in ourselves, greater than any human witness can be, that Christianity is indeed a system of Divine truth." But let us examine the passage we have recited, more in detail. Let us briefly consider, 1st, The nature of saving faith-"He that believeth;" 2ndly, The object of saving faith-"On the Son of God;" 3rdly, The particular consequence of this faith, which the apostle intends by the words "hath the witness in himself."

1st, The nature of faith. This term strictly denotes only the assent or persuasion of the understanding. In accuracy of language, the feelings which any proposition excites, are entirely distinct from the act of the mind, in receiving or rejecting it. Thus, a man may believe something which he dislikes, as really as something which he approves. Nor does bare intellectual assent ne