proof of genuine love to God. You may do them, not because He requires it, but because it suits your interest, or your humor, or, perhaps, because you are anxious for some such evidence of personal religion. But, suppose your motive be a direct desire to do that which is pleasing to God. Here neither do we find any proof of genuine love. It may be very convenient for me to please the man, whom, in the honest feeling of my heart, I look upon with dislike. The hand may perform a thousand acts of compliance with his will, while the heart, all the time, may regret the necessity to which it is driven. But further still: You may say that you have had within you the consciousness of a sensible love to God. And what sort of Being was He? A God of mere natural perfection-unconnected with the blood of the Cross, and unarmed with the attributes of holiness, and of hatred towards sin? Still, then, your confidence is built upon the sand. The God whom sinners are to love is God in Christ-the Being who bids us sanctify Him in our hearts-who receives us only on our knees, and in the dust -who calls to us from the Throne of His holiness, "Come out from the world, and be separate, and I will be unto you a Father, and ye shall be unto me for sons and for daughters." If we have done so, well-if not, no plea, and no apology we can urge, will shield us from the sweeping imputation of having a carnal mind, which is enmity against Him. There are those, undoubtedly, who will feel a sensible recoil from so severe and humiliating a doctrine, and all I can say to palliate the representation, is, that it comes from the pages of the Bible. It is a doctrine, which lies at the base of Christianity. It is one of those doctrines which the apostles spent their lives in preaching-which clung to the witnesses of the truth in the vallies of Piedmont and Savoy —which attended Huss, and Jerome, and Hamilton, to the stake-which cheered Hooper, Ridley, Cranmer, and Latimer, in the fires of martyrdom—and which are now mov. ing on, self-impelled, to fill and enrapture the universe with the mercy, and glory, and love of God. Upon ourselves, too, it seems to me, that the sentiment we have been discussing applies with a most solemn emphasis. It is easy, indeed, to look around among acquaintances and friends, and while the dignity of their visible accomplishments meets the eye, to forget that any thing more is required of them. But O, when the Bible comes along with its disclosureswhen it tears aside the guise of all our external decencies and virtues, and reveals the mountain of sin that lies beneath them-when it proclaims in a voice of ten thousand thunders, that the carnal mind is enmity against God, and that we may get very near to the kingdom of Heaven, and yet never step over the threshold-then it is, that we find the overwhelming importance of spiritual religion-then we realize at once, what must have been the feelings of Jesus Christ, when he cried with tears of solicitude, over Jerusalem, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." After all, however, there is one consolation which enli. vens the most oppressive view of the subject, and that is, the fountain of mercy is still open. Still may the sinner approach-still is the voice of invitation resounding through the ranks of wretchedness and guilt. And are there none here who will listen-who will believe, that to-day is the accepted time? My hearers, how you may feel, I cannot tell, but I confess, there is upon my mind, I know not what inpression, that we are not always to remain so completely unmelted and unmoved. There must be a time coming, at least, I hope in God there may be, when we shall start up from our lethargy-when the inquiry shall pass from one to the other of us, What shall I do to be saved?—and when absorbed in the visions of eternity, many a poor unpardoned sinner within these walls, shall cause the angels of Heaven to rejoice that he has repented. "Why will ye die, O house of Israel ?" SERMON XVIII.* "Take the child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages." Exodus, ii., 8. THE task assigned me to-day, my hearers, is one, I con. fess to you, which I would willingly have been spared. Af ter witnessing the recent evidence of your generosity-after seeing you only two Sabbaths ago, crowding around the altar of humanity, to deposit your alms,-I acknow. ledge it is unpleasant so soon to repeat the work of solicitation. Had you given nothing then, I might plead with you now. Had I discovered, when the call of distress then reached your ears, that you turned hard-hearted away, I might now speak to you with redoubled warmth and energy. But con. trary to all this, you came forward with cheerfulness to the invitation. You cast your mites into the treasury at a period when the pressure of the times might almost have jus tified your refusal to do so; and I will not conceal that such conduct, although the surest pledge of success in asking your charity again, has thrown over me a feeling of sensible reluctance in being called to make the application. In another view of the subject, however, I find much to inspire confidence. The institution on whose behalf I address you has already that sort of standing which saves me the trouble of pushing its claims. You have seen it from its origin to the present hour, passing, unhurt, the different stages of its progress, till now, if I may say so, its character is formed. None of us at this late day need be told, that, in bestowing *Preached in behalf of a Female Orphan Asylum. our bounty here, we do an act which is not merely dictated by benevolence, but approved by the soundest maxims of political economy. I say political economy, and yet a spirit of discouragement has arisen, I admit, both in England and America, towards the general principle of public charities. For why? Because, by holding out the offer of gratuitous support, they go to perpetuate idleness and dissuade it from every effort to take care of itself. Why is it that the poor rates for the last ten years have increased, on both sides the Atlantic, more than thirty per cent. beyond the proportionate increase of population? There is no cause for it which we can see, unless it be that chari. table institutions, in the same time, have been multiplied in very nearly the same ratio. All this, however, has nothing to do with the political economy of maintaining indigent female orphans. They constitute a splendid and honorable exception to the rule; and in every document on the subject of pauperism, foreign or domestic, the provision made for their support is invariably shielded from the censure to which ordinary forms of systematical charity are exposed. The reason of it is obvious. None of the objections which lie so formidably in the one case can be detected for a moment in the other. For example: there is no facility for idleness; on the contrary, the inmates of the asylum are trained to every species of occupation which their probable allotment in life may require. Again: there are no encouragements to poverty. So far from it, when the individuals become of an age to gain their own subsistence, they are expected, in the pursuit of a virtuous and honorable employment, to provide for themselves. What less, I would ask, can be done for them, if any thing be done, than this? What less than to rescue them from the world till they are prepared with safety to enter it; to shelter the tender plants from exposure till they may be exposed with |