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flame, which stand forth amid the darkness of the crucifixion and man learns, that the whole period of the existence of his race upon earth, is but just sufficient for the unfolding of a dispensation which may bring him back from the gates of hell to the footstool of the throne of grace.

But, blessed be God, this is not all. We have already seen that though our moral nature and conduct are then only in their due course when a perfect obedience springs from love and not from fear, yet that our heart and will, frail and corrupt, are too weak and perverse for such obedience, too cold and impure for such love. But even for this the divine dispensation has a remedy. Although, before a God of righteousness unmixed with mercy, man's fears might extinguish his love, and the bitterness of his accusing conscience poison the current of his moral being; with man, redeemed by the divine appointment and upheld by the divine favour, it is no longer so. We owe to our Governor and Judge our rescue, our safety, ourselves. How then shall we fail to love him who first loved us *, and sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins? We have abundant reason to feel towards our Heavenly Parent and Saviour the regard of obedient and affectionate

* 1 John iv. 10.

children. Nor is the cold, dark and dense atmosphere of man's evil disposition allowed to quench this sacred flame: for we receive the spirit of adoption by which we cry Abba, Father! And thus, from the condition of subjects of a rigid and inexorable law, in which our moral constitution places us ;-from the state of convicted and hopeless transgressors in which our perverse will and corrupt hearts have plunged us ;-from the state of slaves of evil and outcasts of good ;-we have power given us to become the children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be glorified with him.*"

O that we might use this power!—that we might so foster in us the working of conscience and the knowledge of a judgment to come, as both to hate and to fear every form of sin;—that we might so acquaint ourselves with God's provision for the deliverance and redemption of man as to have our share in its mercies;—and that we might so experience his sanctifying grace, that our hearts may be in harmony with his law, our hopes fixed in such a heaven as he has pro

Rom. viii. 17.

mised, and our souls filled with such affections as

are meet for his children.

This may God grant.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORALS.

SERMON IV.

ROMANS VI. 12, 13.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

We trust that in the preceding discourses delivered from this place, we have brought into your view various truths which are far from being unimportant to the thoughtful Christian. It has appeared to you, we venture to hope, that moral good and evil are original and peculiar qualities of human actions, not deriving their import from any extraneous and inferior source;-that man has a conscience-a faculty by which he judges

of the moral character of his own deeds and those of others;-that his nature thus compelling him to refer to a law of rectitude and purity, he is irresistibly led onwards to believe his Maker to be a God infinitely righteous and holy;—that our recognition of the supreme authority of conscience within, is so far from being inconsistent with our obedience to God above, that these two habits of the soul are closely connected in their origin, and strongly confirm each other;-that the hope of the favour of God, who is holy, just, and pure, is so far from being inconsistent with the love of goodness for its own sake, that the two affections, as we advance in our moral and Christian condition, tend to coalesce, and finally flow on together in one bright and glowing stream. It has appeared also, in the course of the considerations by which we have endeavoured to illustrate these doctrines, that the difficulties which have been alleged respecting man's knowledge of good and evil, arising from the various degrees and modes in which this knowledge is unfolded among men, do not afford the smallest reason for asserting that man has no natural faculty whose office is to supply such knowledge.

But we have further declared that though man may thus learn to know the path of duty, his

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