the hope of the Gospel is set before you; still you may lay hold of it, if you will but fly for refuge to Jesus.

The way of life and grace is indicated by a thousand bends, and lighted by ten thousand lamps, and we are exhorted, yea, intreated by motives of every kind and from every world to pursue it. And no solitary index ever set up by God points its finger to any other, and there is access to this way only from this world; and human life is a withering flower, a fleeting shadow, a vanishing vapor, a breath in the hand of God, a short uncertainty.

PLEAS OF SINNERS.

Some sinners would set off their obedience against their disobedience; pleading merit against demerit; asserting that they have done some evil and much good; urging in extenuation, that the temptation was strong, and their natures frail; declaring that they were sorry for the offence before they committed it, as well as ever since, and that they do not intend ever to repeat it; and finally reminding God that the sin which they have committed was small,—“Is it not a little one?” thus fostering a vain hope of pardon and acceptance. How very different from such was the Psalmist. prayed, "For thy name's sake, Oh, Lord, pardon mine

He

iniquity, for it is great." This is the temper on which

a sense of pardon will produce penitence and humility. The greater one's need of pardon, the less able to do without it-the more urgent the case-the more miserable the condition-the more powerful the plea with God. The magnitude of a man's iniquity enforces his plea for pardon, just as the greatness of a beggar's necessities enforces his petition for relief, just as the squallid wretchedness of the returning prodigal, pleaded with a kind father. Besides, God's grace is more glorified in pardoning great iniquity, for none but a great God can do such a thing.

It follows that if the greatness of one's iniquity be a reason why it should be forgiven, it can never be a reason why it should not be forgiven.

INABILITY.

We ought to be very guarded in the use of language. Yet is there no impropriety in saying of God that he cannot do certain things, for although cannot more commonly signifies the want of power to accomplish a thing, yet this is not the only meaning of cannot in the Bible or out of it. It always implies the existence of an effectual obstacle, so that the thing will certainly not be done; but the obstacle is not always a want of power to accomplish it. It may be a want of will, or the sense of justice, or the principle of honor, or the strength of

affection, or something else. There is an indisposition which is as invincible as any inability. You might as soon move a mountain, as shake the integrity of some men. Some can be bound by the spiritual bonds of love as fast as others can by chains of iron. If I were going to define cannot, I would say that it expresses either want of power to do a thing, or the existence of a moral obstacle to its performance, as effectual and insuperable as that reared by an absolute impossibility. And if this definition were admitted, it strikes me that it would settle at once the long debated question in the Church in regard to moral and natural inability. One theologian says the sinner can repent, another says he cannot, and thus the minds of the people are perplexed. They are both right in part, and both in part wrong. He can, that is, in so far as repentance is an act of power; and yet he cannot, on account of his love of sin-his utter and invincible aversion to God and holiness,

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Could men climb some steep and rugged ascent, and enter heaven with the boast of victory by their own right hand, and give out the impression that they had, unaided, won for themselves the crown of glory that fadeth not away, many would go to heaven who, as things now are, will meet an everlasting overthrow.

CODE OF HONOR.

Where is there even a single article, in which the law of God and the law of honor do not clash with each other? At the very first glance at them, we see one of them positively forbidding, and the other peremptorily enjoining revenge and murder. What impious effrontery, what dreadful hardihood of guilt is displayed in setting up any code, but especially such a code, in direct and known opposition to the law of God.

Is there to be found in the annals of all the bedlams, a specimen of insanity, more wild and awful, than he presents, who, knowing it is God that says, "Thou shalt not kill,"-ventures, in compliance with the execrable code of honor, to preface his sin, by throwing away the possibility of repentance, and puts in peril two immortal spirits, and goes himself or sends before, the lost, dreadful foe, an unprepared soul, with the fresh guilt of double murder upon it? It is madness, without the loss of reason, and as much to be execrated as to be pitied,

A man may have that in his blood, which will embolden him to meet an antagonist on the measured field of death, and put the warm life at hazard, and peril both worlds at once-that in his blood, which will enable him to defy the constant terrors of his much offended Maker, and to look, without recoil or tremor,

on the glowing bosom of an uncovered hell; who yet has not a particle of that courage, which has its noble rest in the mind, so as to enable him to stand firm when threatened with the neglect or scorn of a few miserable companions.

CONSCIENCE.

Oh, when shall conscience, the judge and patron of duty, be the altar instead of the victim, receiving, instead of constituting the sacrifice, as now it too generally does; and the resolution to know and to do what is duty, prevail over every other purpose of the soul? That time has not yet come.

As you are not to offend your own conscience for your neighbor's sake, for that would be to disregard the Creator out of respect to the creature; so you are bound to forego a gratification out of respect to him, however mean his condition or little his respectability, lest you cause him to offend the Creator because of the creature, Admit that such a course would demand the sacrifice of personal independence in a few trifling things. Greater and more glorious men than you have done the same, and so far from tarnishing, have added lustre to their names.

Whatever that be, for which a good conscience is given, is too dearly purchased. Whatever you fail to