worldliness, luxury, pride, envy, detraction, revenge, we renounce, we forsake you for ever.

Let holiness

and righteousness come in their place. Christian virtues, come and reign in our hearts.

Divine

grace, come and form them there. Then let the year open or close; let our days pass away; let this year lay us in the tomb, or let us survive it; it matters not to us; we shall be in Christ, and in Christ we are superior to time and death. If we are in Christ by grace, it is enough; we shall be eternally in him and with him in glory.

May this be our happy lot: and to him as the supreme Lord of time, the Arbiter of life and death, the Author of the new creature, and the Father of eternity, be honour and dominion, might and majesty for ever. Amen.

SERMON VII.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE FLESH AND THE

SPIRIT.

GALATIANS V. 17.

The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

OF all wars, civil and intestine wars are, with out doubt, the most fatal and dangerous. In them we behold citizen against citizen, relative against relative; a man's own domestics become his foes, and even the son sometimes rises up against the father. Divisions take place in every city, and often in every family. Men arm themselves for the destruction of each other with such extreme fury, that, to work themselves up to it, they must first have broken asunder the strongest bonds, and overleaped all the barriers which nature, humanity, and reason, seemed to oppose. Then they lacerate the bowels of their own mother, by desolating their country, and ravaging the very land which witnessed their birth. Then the state is endangered by internal commotions, which shake the whole fabric of society, and threaten its total overthrow. In like manner the earth suffers by the tremours which agitate its bowels, and produce in it changes far more considerable than could ever be effected

by the force of all the winds let loose upon its

surface.

is

The

My brethren, the heart of man resembles a state which never enjoys repose, but is incessantly agitated by civil and intestine wars ;-" a kingdom "divided against itself," and "how shall" it "stand?"-a world in miniature, perpetually convulsed by sudden and internal commotions which cause strange overturnings and confusions. Nothing more astonishing than the contrarieties and combats exhibited in man, in every state in which he can be contemplated. He seeks the truth; and he hates it. He desires virtue, and he shuns it. He wishes to be happy, and he abandons himself to every thing that renders him miserable. body calls for certain things; the understanding resists it, and requires things diametrically opposite. Reason sometimes determines to be mistress; and the passions, in their turn, make sudden irruptions which carry every thing before them. Sin, like an insolent conqueror, often leads captive all the thoughts and affections of the man; but conscience also sometimes returns to disturb its possession, and to rekindle the war in the soul; which in these agitations and combats, is often unable to refrain from exclaiming with Rebekah, "If it be so, why am I thus ?"

It might be supposed, perhaps, that if a man in a state of sin, or while remaining under the law, is subject to these intestine struggles and contentions, yet a man under grace, regenerated by Jesus Christ, could no longer be exposed to them. Would to God that this were the fact; and that, delivered

from all the remains of our passions and infirmities, we no longer felt the solicitations of sin or insurrections of the flesh against the spirit; then wholly occupied in exulting, "Thanks be to God which

66

giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus "Christ."* But if there are times, privileged moments, when grace victorious and sin overthrown entitle us to assume the language of triumph; yet this, it must be confessed, is not our most common condition: complete victory is reserved for the heavenly world, and in the present state we have a continual conflict, within as well as without. Sometimes vanquished, at other times victors, but always combating, we resemble David in the first years of his reign, when the partisans of the house of Saul still disputed his right to the throne. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit "against the flesh: and these are contrary the one "to the other; so that ye cannot do the things "that ye would."

The mention of this conflict between the flesh and the spirit was occasioned by the dissentions which distracted the Galatian churches: -sad remains of corruption, deplorable evidences that they were still too much under the power of the flesh. Having exhorted them, therefore, to "walk "in the spirit and not fulfil the lust of the flesh," the apostle suggests that this exhortation is highly necessary, on on account of those two principles existing within them, and urging them to things opposite to each other, so that they ought to exercise the greatest watchfulness over themselves.

I Corinth. xv. 57,

"For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the 66 things that ye would."

Here are three things to be considered ;—First, THE COMBATANTS OR ENEMIES, THEIR NATURE AND OPPOSITION: these are "the flesh and the

"spirit," which, St. Paul says, are contrary the one to the other."-Secondly, THE COMBAT OR DOUBLE STRUGGLE; on the one side, of the flesh against the spirit; on the other, of the spirit against the flesh.-Thirdly, THE EFFECT OR RESULT OF THIS CONFLICT; ye cannot do the things that ye would."-These will form the three parts of our discourse.

Our business to-day, my brethren, is to speak to you of wars and combats, but not of thosewhich are raging at a distance, which the favour of God prevents from entering the frontiers of your state; in which, nevertheless, you are most deeply interested. Our subject is a war, of which you are yourselves the theatre, the field of battle. We are going to penetrate the secret recesses of your hearts, and to join you in contemplating what passes there.

This is an interesting spectacle, an affair which highly concerns us. God grant, that by knowing the situation, the strength, and the progress, of the two parties, we may daily be better enabled to make the balance preponderate on the right side, and the spirit to prevail over the flesh. Amen.

I. How happy was the state of innocence! That