wherewith it pronounces on all the habits and temptations and characteristics of human life in each of its varieties-a sagacity that might still be recognised even in modern days; and though the apostle had lived in our city, and spent years in the capacity of a student or a spectator on the exhibitions of our nature that he found in it, he could not have more happily described the wretchedness and the folly of extreme mercantile ambition, than in this passage to Timothy-" But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil-which while some have coveted after they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

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LECTURE LVIII.

ROMANS, viii, 26, 27.

'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."

VER. 26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.'

It would appear from the first clause of this verse, that the great subject of labour and sore anxiety to Christians, and under which they groan inwardly, is their deficiency from holiness; and the great subject of their hope, is the perfect holiness that awaits them in heaven. But, additionally to this expectation of the future, the apostle also tells us here that there is partly a deliverance at present a foretaste of that which they are looking forward to; and from the nature of the foretaste, we may infer the nature of the anticipation. Now the benefit that they have in possession is help against their infirmities; and so the benefit which

they have in prospect is that these infirmities shall be utterly and conclusively done away. In other words it is a moral enlargement on which the truly renovated Christian hath set his affections and his hopes. They are the glories of perfect virtue after which he aspires. It is the fulness of the image and character of the Godhead, that form the triumph and the rejoicing of the blest in eternity. It is an emancipation from the present carnality; and the present corruptness; and the weight of present low and earthly affections into love and light and liberty, while they gaze directly on the excellence of God and reflect that excellence back again from their own character-this is the true heaven which they have in prospect, and for which they have already set themselves out in busy preparation-a preparation therefore of holiness, the only preparation that can fit them for joining in the services or the joys of the upper sanctuary, the only one that can make them meet for the inheritance of the saints.

But, meanwhile, they have somewhat more than a future hope they have a present help; and it is worthy of remark that they are not delivered from their infirmities, they are only helped against them. The burden of them, it would appear, is not lifted off. But strength is afforded that they may be able to bear it. The pressure still exists; but there is an adequate power of resistance given, by which it is effectually withstood. Nevertheless it is a pressure, a felt and a grievous pressure, under

which they groan-even as a strong man might do under a burden, though able with much pain and fatigue to carry it. It is just so with the Christian. He is still weary and heavy-laden; and in this respect he differs from a saint in heaven. But his sins which so weary and so overload him, are not cherished by him as his enjoyments-they are hated and denied and striven against, as his deadly enemies; and in this respect he differs from an unrenovated man upon earth. His state in fact is a state of composition. His life is a life of conflict. There is war in his soul. The vile body aspires to the mastery by its instigations. The mind seeks to retain the ascendant against it; and God's Spirit is sent to help it in its purposes. There will be repose at length, but not here. The battle will not be terminated on this side of death. But reinforcements of strength will be daily sent to keep up the combat-by sustaining that one party, which, but for them, would have surrendered. So that though the soul is not defeated, it is kept in the busy turmoil of a sore warfare-it is often cast down though not destroyed.

For we know not what we should pray for as we ought.' We are convinced that many feel a general undirected desire to be right-a kind of vague though vivid earnestness-an indefinite longing after God and goodness-a sort of looking towards Zion and preference for heavenly things— who at the same time are unable to rest upon aught that is specific or satisfying. They have the sense

of not being as they should be-an indistinct yet strong impression of helplessness—the assurance, though not a very specific or luminous one, that there is a way of passing into a state of rest and a state of enlargement, could they only but find it out and practically enter upon it-There is such an obscure, yet upon the whole urgent and habitu al tendency, incidental to men at the outset of their religious course; and even abiding with them, as it did with Paul and his disciples in our text, for a long time after they had entered upon it. They know not perfectly or precisely what is the matter with them, or what that is which is correctly suited to the disease or the deficiency under which they labour. They would fain give vent to all this feeling of want and of necessity in prayer; but, hazy and unsettled as their spiritual conceptions are, they know not what to pray for as they ought. We think that there must be some present, whose inward experience responds to the sketch that we now set before you-whose hearts are filled with desirousness, but who, incapable of shaping the expression. of it into any distinct or definite prayers, send forth instead the sighs and the aspirations which bespeak little more than a soul in earnest. Amid all these struggles then, between the fervent sincerity of the feelings on the one hand, and the cloudiness of apprehension and intellect on the other, it is somewhat satisfactory to perceive, that even the apostle and his converts, after they had received the fruits of the Spirit, had experience of the very same thing—