found gospel in the judgment day. I cannot get out of this subject.

My leg is broken, run and call a physician. He seats himself gravely by my agonizing couch, and thus begins. "Before I bind up this broken bone, I must first thoroughly satisfy thee concerning all the possible ways, and means, and manners in which bones can possibly be broken! In the first place, then, some men fall and break their own bones; and, in the second place, some men fall and break their own bones, and other people's bones too. O reader, it is a tearful jest; and I laugh, and I weep, alternately, over my paper.

Is not this precisely what we are doing, preaching dissertations how bones can be broken? How it was possible that Adam broke his own bones, and broke our bones. It is not pressing home on sinners their guilt-but explaining how they came to be guilty, that engages us. What matter how they became guilty, since they are so ?

Let us dismiss the quack, and call a good physician, if we should not mistake the mere title of a professional man, for real professional talent.

Dear Doctor, my leg is broken; the pain is excruciating ; cure me quickly. Sir, before I proceed to the cure, it is necessary that I inform thee how broken legs are healed. I care nothing about how they are healed. Heal my broken leg. You must know that the human bone is composed-I know nothing about its composition. You ought to know this much, at least, that out of the sides of the fracture of a fractured bone-Begone, I'll be a dead man before this dissertation is ended. Go quickly, and call a physician who actually has set a broken bone.

Here sir, is a physician, who says he has healed

the bone is healed.

Reader, is not this the right way of doing business? Convince men that they are (no matter how they are) sinners; and depend upon it, when they are convinced that they are sinners, the thought is so absorbing, that it leaves only one other thought in the whole compass of the human soul-What shall I do to be saved? Answer that question, for pity's sake, as quick

as you can.

I cannot get out of this subject yet. But as I am preaching to clergymen, the public, I hope, will excuse my lengthiness. The clergy will not take it amiss. They know the Jordan sometimes overflows its banks.

Fellow-soldiers, the fiend has out-generaled us. We are entirely in the wrong. He has kept us a great deal of our time preaching for his interest, and not for the interest of Jesus Christ. I mean we have been preaching something which is not the gospel; and which has as effectually served the devil's interests, as preaching the gospel subserves the interest of the Redeemer; and we have been doing the former while we should have been doing the latter.

Tell me how sinners' souls are exercised, all the time a preacher is showing how it could be just in God to commit the eternal safety of mankind to Adam How it can be just in God to punish them for the guil in Adam? By what possible means, and through wha possible channels could Adam's transgression reac

them? Why, they sit asking themselves these questions, which their preacher is in vain attempting to solve. How could it be just in God to make Adam my covenant head? How could Adam sin for me? How can God impute Adam's sin to me? Through what possible channel could Adam's sin reach me? What is the amount of all this on the mind of a sinner? Recollect how you felt yourself, when as a sinner you heard these things. Ask any candid man who is not of your sect, how he feels under such sermons. And what will be better than all, as a test of this matter, ask your own heart how it feels. Is it softened? is it melted with a conviction of its sinful condition? No, no! But it is lost in stupid wonder: wondering how it is possible that these things can be true, which God has declared to be true. Now, if exciting doubts and wonders respecting the truth of God's word, and the justice of the divine dispensations, be subservient of Satan's kingdom, judge ye!

But there is a far, far more loudly crying sin to answer for. When the preacher is giving him a long dissertation; shewing him exactly how it is possible that God can offer him everlasting life-the poor trémbling convict, wringing his hands, cries out aloud, I do not ask how it is possible-but I ask, does he offer it to me? When the preacher is proving to him, and showing to him in what manner the righteousness of Christ can be imputed to him, his bursting soul exclaims, I ask not in what manner it may be mine, but can I get it at all? While the preacher is proving, by a metaphysical process, that eternal life may be offered to all men, in a perfect consistency with all the divine perfections and purposes of Jehovah, the poor convict's soul cries within itself, I don't care about all that

POSSIBLE that an offer of salvation should be made to him? That is, he is tortured with questions about God's right to give salvation-Christ's right to procure salvation, and the preacher's right to offer salvation, and his own right to accept salvation; but all this time there is no salvation at all. All this time Satan looks on, rejoices that the salvation of the convict is delayed -delights in the torments of his conscience-rejoices that possibilities have been talked of, and not realities: that rights have been only demonstrated; but the thing to which the right is proved, not put into the possession of him who has a right to it: exults to see that it is considered so far a dubious point, that it requires proof that the preacher has any right at all to offer salvavation and the poor creature is led to awful doubts, whether he has any right to accept of eternal life. Now I ask, is not this doing the very thing the devil would wish you to do? If he can keep you out of pulpits, he will. If he cannot, what can he do better than to employ you in discussions which will delay the coming of the sinner to Christ-which will fill his mind with doubts about his right to come to Christwhich will call in question, whether Christ will receive him, and the Father accept him? All such discussions before a Christian congregation, (with very very, very rare exceptions) are, What is the USE of the doctrine of Adam's representation and original sin ? Aye, what is the use of this doctrine in the grand arch

of the rainbow of the covenant. For surely it is one thing to say a proposition is true, and another o determine what that truth good for. The doctrine of Adam's representation and original sin is in the Bible; but the question is, What was it put there for, and what use ought we to put it to? Here are a few elements which I mean to make use of in solving this question, for my own individual satisfaction.

1. I will ask myself, if ever any prophet, sent by God, of old, to awaken a sinful age, awed their consciences, and enlightened their understanding, by demonstrating Adam's representative character, and proving that mankind are guilty of his sin? Or did they thunder against the sins, the actual, the peculiar sins of that very age; ardently wishing to convince men that they were sinners?

2. I shall enquire into John the Baptist's preaching, and examine how he, who came to prepare the way of our Lord, thundering the law, that Jesus might flash the light of the gospel-how he produced correction in that viperous age, when the tongue that uttered truth, sacrificed the head it belonged to. Was it by preaching the representative character of Adam and original sin or by reproving men for their sins, their own sins, their peculiar sins, with all their aggravations?

3. I shall again read over carefully, the sermons of the master himself, who knew perfectly well how to preach his own gospel; and if I find him proving Adam's representative character, and urging home original sin on the consciences of his auditors, and proving to them that God is just in all this, then the problem will be solved. Or if I find him charging home on the age, the sins which that age had committed,

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