sinew of action. Will they care to be sanctified, wher they shall have learned that their Lord was peccable? Will they press on, to see him as he is, and be like him, when they shall doubt whether he will be known in heaven but by the nail-prints? will they care to invite others to him, when he is robbed of all the charms that attracted them in the days of their espousals? Will they pray with the fervency they have done, that the heathen may be given him for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession, when they shall know that he is to rule by delegation, and does not come into the government by heirship? Will they spend their perishable wealth to honour him, when they shall feel assured, that he has no incorruptable treasures with which to repay them?

How is it with those who have made the experiment, and have delivered over their creed to be blotted and interlined, till the Deity of their mas

ter is gone, and every other truth that hung on it; are they active for God? Do they bless the heathen with the gospel? do they disseminate the bible? do they press the consciences of sinners, in their daily walk, and in their evening visits, and give an ungodworld no rest, till they love their eclipsed and darkened redeemer?

O, hide then this error from God's elect, and let them have the Saviour they are disposed to serve, till he take them up, and show himself to them in

all the glory that he had with the Father before the world was,

I naturally close with the question, "What think ye of Christ?" This question faithfully answered by the minister of the gospel, will give you very much the character of his ministry; as it will define the Saviour he proclaims, and of course the success he has; and answered by the private christian will give the character of his religion. I do not now mean to say that orthodoxy is piety, but simply, that the heart that has been sanctified through the truth, will apprehend and love the truth. In other words faith, will credit the divine testimony. Does the Lord Jesus hold in our ministry, and our creed, the high place that God has given him in the gospel? If we make him merely a teacher and a pattern, so was Moses and Paul. And if we feel that we need no higher saviour, then is it doubtful, whether we have discovered more than half our ruin. If we have sunk no lower, than that a finite arm can reach us, we have yet I fear to learn, that we are sinking still, and that the pit is bottomless. A gospel that is the contrivance of men, will suit only those who have never felt the plague of their own hearts. When we shall have felt the full pressure of the curse that rests upon us, we shall feel the need of one to save, strong as him that created us. The horrors of our condition will scare from us every deliverer, but him who can quench, with his own blood, the fires that have been kind

led to consume us. When we have looked once upon the incensed throne, we shall hail one our high priest, who can go in and sprinkle the mercy seat; who can nutralize that consuming ire which issues from the countenance of a provoked Jehovah; one who has that influence in the court of heaven, that he can procure our acquital, and can place himself in the van of the redeemed multitude, and conduct us up to heaven, and there plead his own merits as the ground of our acceptance, and the foundation of our everlasting blessedness. "Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

SERMON 6.

CHRIST REDEEMS AND SANCTIFIES.

TITUS II. 14.

"Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar peo

ple, zealous of good works."

MORE than eighteen hundred years since, we were visited by a stranger from a foreign world. Two questions were immediately agitated. Who is he? and What his errand? He settled them both; but they have come up, again and again, to the present day. The discourse preceeding this had a bearing upon the first of their questions, and the text now before us, will require us to attend to the second. It is selected, you will remember, from that very book which he left with us, on purpose to answer every inquiry that men would need to make respecting himself and his mission. We learn in the context, who it was that thus gave himself for us, "The great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ."

This audience are aware, that the same men, who deny that our Saviour Jesus Christ, is the great God, differ as widely from the apostle, relative to the part he acted for us. They would allow that

he was commissioned to make known to us the will of God, especially the fact of a resurrection, which nature did not reveal, and establish christian ordinances, and set us an example of virtue. That his death was vicarious, or a substitute for our condemnation, they would generally, and I presume universally deny.

Now if we need a Saviour to do more for us than this, then we need, not the one they offer, but whom the apostle exhibits to our view in the text.

If

my sins must be atoned for, if an evil heart of unbelief must be removed, and when sanctified, I must still be accepted through the merits and the righteousness of another; then I need a Saviour to do more for me than teach me truth, and give me ordinances, and be my pattern in virtue.

Had my ruin consisted merely in having lost a knowledge of God and duty, an angel might have become my instructer, and his example would have answered me the same purpose, as that of the Son of God. It would have seemed in that case wholly unnecessary, that God should be manifest in the flesh. But if the whole heart was faint, as well as the whole head sick; if there hung over us the curse of a broken law, and we were so alienated from God as to be content in perpetual exile from his service and his fellowship; then both instruction and example, if nothing more were done, would be wholly lost upon me.

What can it avail to present truth or exhibit puri