the destiny of such will be their portion for ever. The Lord Jesus once said, and there cometh a day for judgment, when he will surely say it again -"Cast out these unprofitable servants into outer darkness."-It is enough for them that they have been permitted to escape the extremest wretchedness of hell. But for those who have fallen into the second error, the error of thinking that their good will atone for their evil deeds, there remaineth not even this feeble consolation. These are they who vainly think that if they have great and shining virtues, the merits of Christ will, through their faith, be made effectual to the pardon of all, even the greatest of their transgressions and sins. Vain deluded men, where is the foundation of your hope? In heaven, or upon earth? In the mercy of God, or in the power of your own good works? But know ye not that we Iare bound to obey God all our lives, and with all our strength, and that after we have done all we can do, we have done but what it was our duty to do? How then are we to be pardoned for the guilt of wilful or habitual sin? I know but of one principle upon which such a hope can be built, the baseless visionary thought, that the beauty and usefulness of our good works will atone for the deformity and evil of our unrighteous deeds. Be it, however, remembered by all, that there is but one atonement given to man, the sacrifice of Jesus

BB

Christ upon the cross, a sacrifice which will indeed cover the failings of every sincere and penitent and faithful Christian, but will never hide the wilful sinner from the terrors of judgment, nor cast a veil of mercy over the naked guilt of any allowed or presumptuous sin. Let those who trust to the power of good deeds, for the pardon of evil ones, hear this and tremble, and repent, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance.

After all that I have said, need I, my brethren, any more exhort you to cease to do evil, and learn to do well; or any more tell you that it is only by first ceasing to do evil that you can learn to do well; or any more warn you against the fatal error of thinking that if we cease to do evil we need not learn to do well; or that if we learn to do well there is but little necessity for ceasing to do evil. All my discourse hath been of these things, and if yet I have failed of working conviction in your souls, I fear it much, that by our means no serious or solid or permanent impression can be made. The change, if wrought at all, must be an immediate act of the converting power of the Spirit of God.

My brethren, it is after the most serious inquiries into the rigid nature and amazing extent of our actual duties; it is after most carefully recol

lecting our own inability and imperfection in the performance of those duties; it is then we are taught most strongly to feel, and most gratefully to acknowledge the blessings and consolations of the Gospel. Without the grace of God the precepts of the prophet could not be performed at all; and even with that grace, there liveth not the just man that sinneth not, there liveth not the good man that hath not often forgotten or neglected to do good, when it was in the power of his hand to do it. But we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins, whether of omission or of commission. If truly we have believed in the power of his name, and trusted for pardon to the virtue of his sacrifice; if strongly we have struggled against the corruption of our flesh; if we have not madly thought to deceive God by deceiving ourselves; if we have tried to do what we know we ought to do; if we have always and duly repented us of the evil, and never fallen without rising again, then will that Saviour wash away in his own blood the stains of our guilt; and having in this life enabled us in some measure to cease from evil, and learn to do well, will make us, in heaven, to cease altogether from sorrow and from sin, and learn to be righteous and blessed for ever.

DISCOURSE XVI.

EXODUS, chap. xx. ver. 8.

"Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy."

IN casting a religious eye upon the various nations and people of the earth, and endeavouring to separate them according to their different forms of worship and modes of belief, one of the first, because the most obvious, distinctions we are naturally led to draw, is between those who do and those who do not "remember a Sabbath-day." The savage of the South, and the idolater of the East, toil on from year to year, without any of that comfortable feeling, which, in the Christian world, supports and animates the most sorrowful and laborious of the sons of men, when they think upon that weekly return of repose, which the laws of their country and the religion of their Redeemer have consecrated and enjoined for the observance of all. The worshippers of stocks and of stones have nothing to look forward to but the irregular return of some cruel or some burthensome service to their gods; no hope to lighten

་

their labours or wipe away the tears from their eyes, but the horrible hope of some carnal enjoyment or some licentious festival. Their hours are never cheered by the early prospect of a period to their toils, and their hearts are unblessed by the joyful certainty of that happy day, when even on earth" the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest." If there is one circumstance which more than another ought to call forth the grateful acknowledgments of our souls for the dispensation of the Gospel under which we have been born, it is the observation of the general diffusion of happiness and ease, and the remembrance of that recreation to the worn-out mind, and that recruiting of the wasted strength, which the regular recurrence of the Sabbath affords. I have often heard it remarked by Christians of a serious and devout disposition, to whom the sacred day of rest had become, through habit and principle, a season of hallowed delight, that it seemed to their eyes as if, on the Sabbath, the sun did shine more bright, the works of God appear more beautiful, the fields more fresh, the flowers more sweet, and all the face of nature to wear an unusual and a fitting stillness. It is not that the sun does shine more bright, or that the fields are indeed more fresh, or the flowers more sweet upon this than upon any other day. It is only that we are apt to think thus, because our minds are attuned to