unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? Ye cannot serve God and mammon;" Luke xvi. 9. 13.

"Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble;" &c. Psal. xli. 1, 2, &c. Read Deut. xv. 7-9., &c. 2 Cor. ix. 1,9., &c. Dan. iv. 27. Lev. xxiii. 22. Prov. xxii. 9.

"He that giveth to the poor shall not lack; but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse;" Prov. xxviii. 27. Read Isaiah lviii. throughout..

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted of the world;" James i. 27.

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days-Ye have lived in pleasure on earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter-" James v. 1-3. 5.

"We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren: but whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth;" 1 John iii. 16-18.

"Let him that is taught in the word, communicate unto him that teacheth in all his goods (or good things). Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap-Let us not be weary in welldoing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men; especially to them who are of the household of faith;" Gal. vi. 6, 7.9, 10.

As

"Let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth;" Eph. iv. xxviii.

"He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward: and he that receiveth a

righteous man in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward;" Matt. x. 41, 42.

Read 1 Cor. ix. 4-16.

"Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me-Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me;" Matt. xxv. 40. 45.

"But when thou doest alms, le tnot thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly;" Matt. vi. 3, 4.

"But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none-and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it; for the fashion of this world passeth away;" 1 Cor. vii. 29-31.

THE

CRUCIFYING OF THE WORLD'

BY THE

CROSS OF CHRIST.

GALATIANS VI. 14.

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

EVER since mankind had a being upon earth, the malicious apostate spirits have been their enemies. If it was the will of our Creator that we should be militaries in our innocency, and keep our standing, and attain our confirmation and glory by a victory, or else come short of it if we lost the day; no wonder that our lapsed condition must be militant, and that by conquest we must obtain the crown. But there is a great deal of difference between these combats. In our first state we were the sole combatants against the enemy ourselves, and we fought in that sufficient strength of our own which was then given us, and by our wilful yielding we were overcome. But since our fall we fight under the banner of another, who having first conquered for us, will afterwards conquer in us and by us. All the great transactions and bustles of the world, which our fathers have reported to us, which have filled all the histories of ages, and which our eyes have seen, or our ears have heard of, are nothing but the various actions or successes of this great war ; and all the persons in the world are the soldiers in these two armies, whereof the Lord of life, and the prince of darkness are the generals: the whole inhabited world is the field. The great onset of the enemy was made upon the person of our Lord himself; and as often as he was assaulted or did assault, so oft did he overcome. In the wilder

ness he had that first appointed conflict with satan himself, hand to hand. Through his whole life after, he was assaulted by the inferior sort of enemies. And a leader in his own army, even Peter himself, is once seduced to become a satan, (Matt. xvi. 22.) and a traitor Judas is the means of his apprehension, and then the blinded Jews and rulers of his crucifixion, and there had he the last and greatest conflict; in which when he seemed conquered he did overcome, and so his personal war was finished. When the Captain of our salvation was thus made perfect through sufferings, (Heb. ii. 10.) that he might bring many sons to glory, his next work was to form his army; which he did, by giving first commission to his officers, and appointing them to gather the common soldiers, and to fill his bands. No sooner did they set themselves upon the work, but satan sendeth forth his bands against them: persecutors assault them openly and heretics are traitors in their own societies, and make mutinies among the soldiers of Christ, and do them more mischief by perfidiousness, than the rest could do by open hostility. The first sort of them took advantage, 1. By the reputation of Moses' law, and the zeal of the blinded Jews for its defence. And, 2. From the dangers, sufferings and fleshly tenderness of many professors of the Christian faith, which made them too ready to listen to any doctrine that promised them peace and safety in the world: and as they were themselves a carnal generation, that looked after worldly glory and felicity, and could not bear persecution for Christ, and so were enemies to his cross, while they profess themselves to be his disciples, so would they have persuaded the churches to be of the same mind, and to take the same course as they; that so they might not be noted for carnal and cowardly professors themselves, while they brought others to believe the justness of their way; but rather might have matter of glorying in their followers, instead of being either sufferers with the true Christians, or rejected by them whose profession they had undertaken.

These were the persons that Paul had here to deal with, against whom having opposed many arguments through the epistle, in the words of my text he opposeth his own resolution, "God forbid that I should glory," &c.

The words contain Paul's renouncing the carnal disposition and practice of the false apostles, and his professed re-.