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whether he be not an utter stranger to the gait and the attitude of His servant-and whether the question is ever taken up, or ever brought to a conclusion, that is afterwards in very deed and history proceeded on, What is the will of God in the matter before me?' We do not charge you with any transgression against the social or domestic principles of our nature-any more than we deny of a rambling planet which now flounders its capricious and unregulated way in space, that there the chemical affinities, or there the active play of all those influences which belong to its own peculiar and physical system, are unknown. But we do charge you with the disownal of the authority of God. We affirm that against Him you have deeply revolted. We cannot deny that many of you have much of secular worth and excellence. But we deny that you have the least tint of sacredYou are not demoralized out of all virtue, but you are desecrated out of all godliness; and we appeal to the distinctly felt current of your plans and purposes and desires, or we appeal to the familiar history of your every day, whether the will of God be the reigning principle of your mind, whether God can be said to have the rule over you.

ness.

Now Christianity is a restorative system. Its object is to reinstate the authority of God over the wills and consciences of men; and by this great and ascendant power of moral gravitation, again brought back to its influence over our heart, to reclaim our wandering species into that duteous

conformity to Himself from which they have departed so widely. What He wants is to restore us to our wonted place among the goodly orbs of His own favoured and unfallen creation; and this He does simply by turning away ungodliness from our hearts. It is to set up that ancient and primeval law, by which the creature is bound to recognise the Creator in all his ways-so that instead of fluctuating as heretofore through the mazes of error and wilfulness and sin, he might walk with assured footsteps on that right and lofty path, which is defined by Heaven's jurisprudence, and to which he is willingly constrained by Heaven's grace. And it is thought, that, though godliness be a single principle out of the many which operate on the heart, yet that upon its re-establishment alone, there would instantly emanate a peace and a virtue that should be felt in all the departments of our nature. The benevolence would be stimulated, and the justice become greatly more strict and sensitive, and the temperance and purity be more guarded than ever, and the malignant propensities be kept in check and at last exterminated-and so all the secondary and earthly moralities, which may and do exist without godliness, attain by godliness, a far brighter lustre and a far more effective and salutary ascendant over the character and interests of our species. Even as the planet, that, without the scope of the law of gravitation to the sun, has deviated from its path, yet retained the principles which be at work throughout its mass and upon its

surface-restore to it this single law which for a season has been suspended, and you do a great deal more than simply reclaim it to the old elliptic path which it was wont to revolve in. You impress and you vivify all the operations of the terrestrial mechanism-you call those tides into force and action, which arouse the sluggish ocean out of its unwholesome stagnancy-and you set afloat through the air those refreshing currents, by which its purity is upholden-and you pour abroad that beauteous element of light, which, with its accompanying warmth both stimulates all the processes, and discloses all the graces and the laws of the vegetable kingdom-And, in a word, you, by this single restoration, turn the else desolate and unpeopled globe into a vast habitation of life and of enjoyment, where the notes of cheerfulness may be heard on every side; and there may be seen the works of busy design, the abodes of industry and comfort, the temples of piety.

Now it is the Spirit who evolved matter out of the chaotic state; and it is the Spirit who renews a living body out of the putrefaction into which it had mouldered; and it is the very same agent, even the Spirit of God, who renovates the heart of man, and forms him anew into righteousness and true holiness. It is a doctrine that is mightily nauseated in this our day-forming, as it does, one of the most offensive peculiarities of the Gospel; and perhaps more fitted than any other to revolt into antipathy, both the natural and literary taste of those

who hear of it. It is therefore the more desirable, when any thing can be alleged, which might propitiate you in its favour. And surely-if you can be at all affected by the contrast between the loathsomeness of the grave, and the gracefulness of a living form invested with the bloom and vigour of immortality; or between the turbulence of warring elements, and that magnificent harmony of animate and inanimate things which has been made to emerge therefrom into our goodly world-this should enlist you altogether on the side of so beneficent an agency and, instead of that felt and invisible repugnance wherewith the doctrine of the Holy Ghost as our refiner and as our sanctifier is listened to by men, you should hail these informations of the Bible, by which you are given to understand that the same plastic energy, which moved on the face of the waters at the beginning, and has since moulded the very dust into organism and living beauty-that this too is the principle of that new creation, which, out of ruined and distempered humanity, raises, upon every true disciple of Jesus, the worth and the excellence that fit him for immortality.

But better than all speculation on this topic, would it be that you prized the operation of the Spirit your heart, and that you earnestly and habitually prayed for it. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is too much neglected in practice. It is not adverted to, that all acceptable virtue in man is the product of a creating energy, that is actually put forth upon and that it is his business to wrestle in sup

him;

plication with heaven, that it may indeed be put forth upon himself. And this is the order in which the graces and embellishments of the new creature spring up in the believer. Ere God will pour them on his person, he must enquire after them. The Spirit of grace and supplication is generally given, ere the things which it is your part to supplicate for are given. And therefore be not surprised at your miserable progress in sanctification, if a stranger to the habit of prayer. Wonder not and complain not, that strength to help your infirmities is still withheld, if you have not mixed the prayer of faith with your severe yet ineffectual struggles against the power of corruption. Think not that you are to overcome, if, with all the humbleness of a needy and dependent creature, you do not look up to a power that is greater than your own; and give not the glory of all holiness in the creature, to that high and heavenly influence which cometh down from the Creator. You have never yet known what the receipt is for making you virtuous, if, to this hour, you have been ignorant or inexperienced as to the efficacy of prayer. Though you should have tried every thing else beside; you are still morally in a state of helpless and hopeless disease. And therefore, with all the eagerness of a patient who has been enquiring and experimenting for years about the right method of being healed, take yourself now to this prescription; and see whether a blessing will not come out of it. And, like those medicines which are of daily application, should you pray

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