tinued hardness and impenitence. We all can understand what this means: would to God, that we all, in the Scripture sense of the word believed it: that is, that it had entered not only into our understandings, but into our very heart of hearts, a daily living fountain of peace, and hope, and joy.

True it is, that this Bread of Life does not nourish us all; and instead of seeing that the fault is in ourselves, and that to our sickly bodies the most wholesome food will lose its virtue, we are apt to question the power and usefulness of the food itself. True it is, that if we were but good and holy, it would be an idle question to ask about our faith, when our lives sufficiently declared it. So, if a man were strong and healthy, it would be needless to inquire about the quality of his food. But not more foolish is it to suppose that a man can be strong and healthy without wholesome food, than to think that we can be good and holy without a Christian's faith. Even with that faith, how far are we from what we ought to be even the best and holiest of us all; yet those who have tried it know that without that faith they would be nothing at all; and that, in whatever degree they have overcome the world or themselves, it is owing to their faith in the promises of God the Father, resting on the atonement of the blood of his Son, and given and strengthened by the abiding aid and comfort of the Holy Spirit.

SERMON XII.

GALATIANS, iii. 24.

The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.

In the sermon which I preached last Sunday from this place, I could not forbear from entering into some detail upon the great and peculiar truths of Christianity. The day seemed to call for such a choice of a subject, as it was set apart to commemorate, not one part only of the scheme of our redemption, like the feasts of Christmas, or Easter, or Whitsuntide, but the whole of it together: all our relations to God, and all that God has done for us, are concentrated in a manner in the celebration of Trinity Sunday. Yet, even at the very time when I was thus dwelling on the great truths of the Gospel, I doubted whether my hearers were sufficiently advanced to receive them. I do not mean advanced in understanding,-for in that respect thay are, indeed, easy, but advanced in Christian feelings and Christian practice. By what strange error could it have ever happened that the

doctrines of the Gospel have been regarded as little bearing upon our practice, but because the practice of so many, who call themselves Christians, has been unfit to receive them? It is an awful, but a certain truth, that the very foundation of Christianity, that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," is heard continually with no lively impression of the inestimable blessing conveyed in it. How should it rightly be valued, when we care so little about the evil of sin, and think there is nothing very alarming in the condition of a sinner? Therefore the words of the Apostle are for ever useful, and apply to the successive stages of our individual growth, no less than to the successive periods in the existence of the world; "The law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ:" and it is vain to hope that we shall ever attain to the full faith and love of a Christian, without having first gone to school to the teaching of the law.

For this reason it is, that on former occasions I have spoken less than some, perhaps, might expect, of the promises of the Gospel; and have dwelt much more upon your own individual faults and duties. Assuredly, if any one among you were filled with an entire hatred of sin,-if he were thoroughly anxious to become like God, and felt most deeply the infinite distance between the most pure and most high God, and himself a sinner,to such an one I would hasten to hold forth the

Gospel promises,-to such an one I would repeat all those comfortable words, of which the Scripture is so full-that there is no condemnation for those who believe in Christ, and that all who believe in him are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses. I would say, that, through the aid of Christ's Spirit, they should be daily renewed after Christ's image, till their resemblance to God should be the sure sign that they were, indeed, the children of God. This, I say, is the language which we should use to those who are really anxious about their salvation; who really are dissatisfied with and distrust themselves, and love and entirely desire to please God. It was when the publican said, in sincerity and earnestness of heart, "God be merciful to me a sinner," that he went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee. It was when Job confessed that he had endeavoured to justify himself in vain, and that he now abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes, that the answer of God was given, that he had spoken the thing that was right, and that his latter end should be blessed more than his beginning. But I fear, that, to most of you, the best proof that the mercies of your redemption are not the fittest subject on which to address you, is contained in the fact, that you are so little interested in hearing of them: "The law then must be your schoolmaster to bring you unto Christ;" that is,

we must try if, by any means, declaring to you the pure and perfect law of God, and contrasting it with your own principles and practice, we can succeed in making you feel your sin and your danger, and so, ready and eager to fly to Christ for deliver

ance.

What the aspect of public schools is, when viewed with a Christian's eye,-and what are the feelings with which men, who do really turn to God in after life, look back upon their years passed at school,-I cannot express better than in the words of one who had himself been at a public school, who did afterwards become a most exemplary Christian, and who, in what I am going to quote, seems to describe his own experience: "Public schools," he says, "are the very seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or it may not; but the fact is indisputable. None can pass through a large school without being pretty intimately acquainted with vice; and few, alas! very few, without tasting too largely of that poisoned bowl. The hour of grace and repentance at length arrives, and they are astonished at their former fatuity. The young convert looks back with inexpressible regret to those hours which have been wasted in folly, or worse than folly: and the more lively his sense of the newly discovered mercies, the more piercing

a The late Mr. John Bowdler.-See his "Remains," Vol. II. p. 153. Third edition.