Faith; that is, not only a faith in God, our heavenly Father, but a faith in God, as he has revealed himself to us in the New Testament; that is, in God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason why this Christian faith is so much more excellent than any other kind, even of religious faith, is because it shows us more of God's perfections than any other; and from that view becomes even yet stronger, and more pure, and more self-abandoning. I know well enough that here I am approaching ground on which, unhappily, I cannot, to all my hearers, make myself fully understood. Many there are, and ever will be, in every congregation, to whom the word of salvation through the blood of Christ, will be as hard and as uninteresting a saying, as it was to those Jews who followed Christ by the sea of Galilee, because they had eaten of the loaves and were filled, but who turned back and walked no more with him, when he spoke of the bread of life; and yet more when he told them, that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. I know that all cannot receive the words of the kingdom of heaven, because their hearts and minds are so little heavenly. Of faith in our parents' promises we can all understand, however little we practise it;-even religious faith, in its more general sense, is not wholly out of our reach: but when we come to Christian faith, so simple and so natural to those

who have first believed their parents' word, and have early learnt from them to believe and love God's also, we find it hard and wholly unattractive to those who have never been in the habit of believing either. How can such understand the excellence of Christian faith, which shows to us God so pure, that he must punish the sinner, and yet so loving to us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to save us from our sins? How can they, who are so vain of every little good thing they do, and who so quickly forget every thing that they do evil; how can they understand a faith which has learnt so much of God and of itself, as to feel that all its good deeds are less than nothing, when compared with an eternal reward-that its evil deeds are so many and so hateful to God, that it finds not in itself how to escape from the sentence of his justice? In short, how can they, who live wholly by sight, who do not practise even the lower kinds of faith, how can they so much as understand the highest? Yet, as without that highest faith we cannot be saved, as you, all of you, and I too, are living either in and by this faith, or in the assured and daily increasing wrath of God, as we have peace with him through Jesus Christ, or have no peace at all, and shall have none for ever, and our state is only the more hopeless, for our being so fatally blind to it,—so I must strive to lay before you, in some future

sermons, the nature and uses of Christian Faith; hoping and praying that the attempt may be blessed by the Spirit of God to your benefit, and that it may not be to me a double condemnation, if, while I speak of it to others, I have it not practically for my own soul's deliverance.

SERMON II.

1 JOHN, v. 4, 5.

This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

I SPOKE in my sermon last Sunday of Faith in its more general sense: first, of faith as exercised by a child towards his parents; and, afterwards, of religious faith, according to that description of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he says, "that he who cometh to God, must first believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him." I then proposed to speak more particularly of Christian faith, and to show how this was the most perfect kind of all, and most powerful to give us the victory over all temptations. And it is this part of the subject which I must now endeavour to lay before you as clearly as I am able.

We must remember how faith was described to be a preferring some future and unseen good to a present and visible one, on the authority of some

one whom we had reason to think good and wise. And we must remember also that religious faith consisted in preferring future to present good things, on the authority of God himself; that is, of One who is perfectly wise and good. That is to say, we may suppose a man influenced by religious faith to say thus to himself: "I know that the present temptation is very strong; but then I have the promise of God, who cannot lie, that, to serve him faithfully, will be better for me than any thing else in the world; and trusting to his word, I will forego the present pleasure, in the hope of that future blessing which he promises." It is plain that this faith or trust in God rests upon our belief of his goodness, wisdom, and power, however we may have gained our knowledge of these attributes; and it will be readily seen, that in proportion as our impression of God's perfections is more lively, so will our readiness to trust to him entirely be stronger, and more unhesitating. This is no more than we see at once to be the case in our human relations. It may be that a child who has never seen his father, may be very desirous to obey him, and to trust to his instructions, because he knows that he is his father, and has a general impression of his kindness and wisdom; but it is clear that he would obey him much more readily, and rely upon his counsels much more fully, if he had a close per