felt the force of its personal application-the simple peasant who knows himself a sinner has found out the adjustments of Scripture with all the moral and spiritual necessities under which he laboursand so, without one ray of guidance from the literature of the schools, does he rejoice in his Bible, and has embraced its promises, and believes and most rationally believes in its truth.

36. It is thus that where there is a sense of guilt, a bare statement may do and do immediately, what, without that sense, cannot be done by the most ingenious and well-sustained demonstration. It is thus that the Gospel often finds a credence and an acceptation, when simply expounded among simple hearers who are practically in earnest, which is vainly attempted by a labouring and ambitious oratory among men whose fancies have been regaled, and whose feelings have been moved, and all whose reasoning faculties have been put on the play of their most congenial exercise while their consciences are in profoundest dormancy. Such men require a stream of argument or the flashes of imagery to keep them awake. The insipidity of a naked statement has no charms for them. Were it the statement of their deliverance from that which they actually dreaded, they would feel an interest-but they have no dread, and therefore it is that they seek for no deliverance. We stand in need of no literary attraction whatever, to secure a welcome admittance for the offer of a discharge from the debt which oppresses us. or of an unfailing cure for the disease under which we labour. But take away our personal interest

from such a communication,-let the subject of it be a scheme for the liquidation of the national debt, or an argument on the effect and virtues of a medicine-and that our attention may be engaged, there must be the exhibition of proofs and principles and processes of reasoning. It is much in the same way that the doctrine of the atonement may either be argumented in the terms of scholarship, or it may be stated in the terms of a simple affirmation. The argument may be listened to and liked by men who feel no personal concern, and therefore make no personal application. The statement may lodge, and with the power of its own inherent evidence, in the bosoms of men, who see the lineaments of truth in a doctrine, which bears upon it so many traces of correspondence with the needs and the fears and the aspirations of a nature which they know to be undone. And thus it is that faith standeth not in the wisdom of man. That power of demonstration which might make us converts to the philosophy that he expounds, will not make us converts to the Gospel that he preaches. Conversion to the truth as it is in Jesus, does not lie in the understanding being reached by a train of deductions; but it lies in the conscience being reached by the naked assertion of the truth. To go and preach the Gospel is not to go and argue it, but it is to go and proclaim it. The bare proclamation of it has often been followed up by an immediate belief of it—and it may be so still. The mere utterance of what the Gospel is, has frequently of itself prompted the firm convic tion that the Gospel is true. The moment that

it was apprehended as to the meaning of it, has it bidden, by the authority of an evidence that was instantly and powerfully felt, an acquiescence in the truth of it. There may be a something in the doctrine without that so responds to the moral constitution within, and this respondency may be so close and so complete in all its adaptations, as to impress, and impress most rationally the belief of its being a true doctrine. This is the grand engine of christian proselytism. It is not we think either by wielding the arguments of subtle controversy, or by plying the analogies of skilful and varied illustration, that any effectual conviction is carried. It is by simply promulgating the doctrine, and confiding the acceptance of it to the way in which it meets and is at one with the knowledge that a man has of his own heart, and the sense by which he is touched of his own necessities. He cannot but award his confidence to a statement, which, however unaccompanied it may be with reasoning, reveals to him the intimacies of his own bosom-and thus it is that Christianity commends itself to the acceptance of its disciples, not through the medium of lengthened argument or lofty erudition—but simply through the word brought nigh unto them and the manifestation of its truth unto their conscience.

37. III. The proof on which we are now to enter is more strictly entitled to the appellation of experimental, than either of the two former. It dif fers from these very much as experience differs from observation. We are but engaged in the business of observation, when attending to the accordancy

which sits on the aspect of a profest revelation, between what we perceive to be its statements and what we feel to be the state of our own hearts; and, in particular, when attending to the joint testimony given by conscience and by scripture to the great moral depravation of our nature. And it is as much a work of observation, when attending to the accordancy which obtains, between the offered provisions of the Gospel and the felt wants of humanity-or, in particular, when attending to the way in which our natural fears of guilt are met by a remedy of most exquisite skilfulnessso that, while a free channel is opened up for the clemency of God to the most worthless of our kind -still the mercy thus lavished upon the world, instead of undermining that throne whereof justice and judgment are said to be the habitation, is a mercy that serves to vindicate and exalt the whole character and perfections of the Deity. In both these instances, we but take an observation. in the instance now to be given, we undergo an experience. An event takes place of which ourselves are the subjects, an event in our own moral and spiritual history-by which, no doubt, a new scene of observation is opened to us; and we become the observers of an evidence that was before hidden from our eyes: But in the event itself there is an evidence, which of all others might well be denominated "experimental" that event being a change in our mental state which proves in a direct manner the agency of God, and carries in it His attestation to the truth of that scripture which professes to have come from Him.

But

38. To understand the nature of this event, we may remark, that long before it has taken place, we may, if not convinced by the verity, at least be imprest by the verisimilitudes of the christian revelation. The most unlettered peasant, with no other elements than a conscience and a common sense, is capable of being thus impressed. And his attention may be powerfully interested long before his conviction has been gained-or long before he has reached that faith which is unto salvation. For anterior to this, he may feel all the urgencies of fear, and of desire, and of a strong personal interest in a question which involves the favour of God and the fate of eternity. He may long for the repose of settled convictions on the subject; and, for this purpose, may cast about for a more overpowering light and a more satisfying evidence than any which he has yet found, in the course of his anxious and repeated endeavours after the solution of his everlasting destiny. It is very conceivable, that, as the Father of his spirit is the great object whom in all this process of desire and of strenuousness he is in quest of, he may, in addition to the perusal of that which claims to be His word, lift the aspirations of his soul towards Him, for guidance and aid, in a pursuit which so deeply interests himself. In other words he may add prayer to those other mental exercises, by which he is labouring after the settlement of that question upon which hinges his eternity; and it were interesting to know how the Christianity that results from such a process, instead of a reverie or a fanatical imagination, might be indeed the con