filial attachments, what avait your domestic virtues, which the world so much admire, and praise you for, if, in the sight of God, these are all the while enhancing your ungodliness? Let no man misunderstand me, as if I had said that it was a bad thing to be honest, to be faithful, and just, and affectionate to parents. Every sensible man knows the value of these earthly virtues, and how much they are invigorated and enlarged, and begin a new life, as it were, when the worldly man becomes a believer. But this I do say, that if thou hast nothing more than these earthly virtues, they will every one of them rise in the judgment only to condemn thee. I say only what the mighty Luther hath said before me, that these virtues of thine, whereby thou thinkest to build thy Babel tower to heaven, are but the splendid sins of humanity; and that they will only serve to cast thee down into tenfold deeper condemnation. God doth not charge you, brethren, with dishonesty, with disobedience to parents. The only charge which he brings against you here is, the one long sin of the natural man's life, ungodliness. God is not in all your thoughts. He admits that you have earthly virtues; but these just make blacker and more indelible your sins against heaven.

And

I. I infer from this passage, that our worldly virtues will not atone for sin, or make us acceptable in the sight of God.Humanity is a ruin; but it is beautiful even in ruins. just as you may wander through some magnificent pile, over which the winter storms of whole centuries have passed, and stand with admiring gaze beside every fluted column, now broken and prostrate, and luxuriate with antiquarian fancy amid the half-defaced carving of Gothic ages, as you may do all this without so much as a thought of the loss of its chief architectural glory, the grand proportions of the whole towering majestically heavenward, with bastion and minaret, all now lying buried in their own rubbish, so may you look upon man; you may wander from one earthly affection and faculty to another, filled with admiration of the curious handiwork of Him who is indeed the most cunning of artists; you may luxuriate amidst the exquisite adaptations of man to man, so nice as to keep all the wheels of society running smoothly and easily forward; you may do all this, as thousands have done before you, without so much as a thought of the loss of man's chiefest glory, the relation of man to his God, that while many amid the rubbish of this world are honest, and fair-dealing, and affectionate to parents, there is not one that seeketh after God.

Let us imagine for an instant that these worldly virtues could take away sin; and just look to the consequences. Where would you find the man altogether destitute of them? where is salvation to stop? If honesty and generosity are to blot out one sin, why not all sin? In this way you can fix no limit between the saved

and the unsaved; and, therefore, all men may live as they please, for you never can prove that one man is beyond the pale of salvation. Again: if worldly virtues could blot out sin, Christ is dead in vain. He came to save his people from their sins. Angels ushered him into the world as the Saviour of sinners. John bade men behold in him the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; and the whole Bible testifies, that "through this man is preached unto you the remission of sins." But if the every-day honesties, and kindnesses, and generosities of life, could avail to take away sin, what needed Christ to have suffered? If anything so cheap and common as earthly virtues are, could avail to the blotting out of sin, why needed so inestimably precious a provision to be made as the blood of the Son of God? If, with all our honesties, and all our decencies and respectabilities in the world, we do not stand in need of everything, why doth Christ counsel us to buy of him gold tried in the fire, that we may be rich? Nothing that is imperfect can make us perfect in the sight of God. Hence the admirable direction of an old divine; "Labor after sanctification to the utmost; but do not make a Christ of it; if so it must come down, one way or other. Christ's obedience and sufferings, not thy sanctification, must be thy justification." The matter seems a plain one. God is yet to judge the world in righteousness; that is, by the strictest rule of his holy law. If we are to be justified in his sight on that day, we must be perfect in his sight. But that we cannot be, by means of our own sanctification, which is imperfect. It must be through the imputing of a perfect righteousness, then, even the perfect obedience of Christ, that we are to be justified in that day. We are complete only in Christ; we are perfect only in Christ Jesus. But ah! brethren, if our sanctification will not do for a righteousness in that day, much less will our worldly virtues do. If your honesties and worldly decencies are to be enough to cover your nakedness, and make you comely in the sight of God, why needed Christ to have fulfilled all righteousness, as a surety in the stead of sinners? Why does he offer to make poor sinners the righteousness of God in him? Why does he say of his saved ones: "Thou wast perfect in beauty, through my comeliness which I put upon thee?"

II. I infer from this passage that earthly virtues may accompany a man to hell.-I desire to speak with all reverence, and with all tenderness upon so dreadful a subject. The man who speaks of hell should do it with tears in his eyes. But, oh! brethren, is it not plain, that if the love of earthly parents, and honesty to earthly masters, be consistent with utter ungodliness upon carth, they may also be consistent with the ungodliness of hell? Which of you does not remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus? When the rich man lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torments, and when he prayed Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger

that never

in water, and cool his tongue, what was the one other desire which in that fearful hour racked the bosom and prompted the prayer of the wretched man? was it not love for his brethren? "I pray thee, therefore, father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment."-Luke xvi., 27. Ah! my brethren, does not this one passage remove a dreadful curtain from the unseen world of woe? does it not reveal to you some eternal pains which you never dreamed of. There will be brotherly affection in hell. These parching flames cannot burn out that element of our being. But, oh! it will give no case, but rather pain. The love of children will be there; but, oh! what agonies shall it not cause, when the tender mother meets the children on whose souls she had no pity, the children whom she never brought to the Saviour, the children unprayed for, untaught to pray for themselves! Who shall describe the meeting of the loving wife and the affectionate husband in an eternal hell? those prayed with one another, and for one another; those that mutually stifled each other's convictions; those that fostered and encouraged one another in their sins? Ah! my friends, if these, the tenderest and kindest affections of our nature, shall be such fierce instruments of torture, what shall our evil affections be? I would now speak a word to those of you who are counting upon being saved, because you are honest and affectionate to parents. Oh! that you would be convinced this day by Scripture and common sense, that these, if you be out of Christ, and therefore not at peace with God, do but aggravate your ungodliness, and will add torment inexpressible to your hell. If, then, our very virtues condemn us, what shall our sins do? If the ungodly shall meet with so fearful a doom, where shall the open sinner appear? But there is a fountain opened up in Zion, to which both the ungodly and the sinner may go; and if only you will be persuaded to believe that you are neither more nor less than one of these lost and undone creatures, I know well how swiftly you will run to plunge yourself into these atoning waters. But if you will still keep harping upon the theme of your many excellent qualities, your honesty, your uprightness, your filial and parental affection, your exactness in equity, your kindness in charity, and will not be convinced by the very words of God, that though the son honor his father, and the servant his master, these do but add a deeper and more diabolical dye to your forgetfulness and contempt of God. If you still do this, then we can only turn away from you with sadness, and say: "The publicans and harlots enter into heaven before you."

Larbert, Nov. 22, 1835.

SERMON XXIX.

THE DIFFICULTY AND DESIRABLENESS OF CONVERSION.

"I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord."-Ps. xl., 1-3.

THERE can be little doubt that the true and primary application of this psalm is to our Lord Jesus Christ; for though the verses we have read might very well be applicable to David, or any other converted man, looking back on what God had done for his soul, yet the latter part of the psalm cannot, with propriety, be the language of any but the Saviour; and, accordingly, the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses are directly applied to Christ by the apostle in the 10th chapter of Hebrews: "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared me in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God." The whole psalm, therefore, is to be regarded as a prayerful meditation of Messiah when under the hiding of his Father's countenance; for, how truly might he who knew no sin, but was made sin for us, he on whom it pleased the Father to lay the iniquities of us all, how truly might he say, in the language of verse 12, "Innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me."

According to this view, verses 1-3 are to be regarded as a recalling a former deliverance from some similar visitation of darkness, in order to comfort himself under present discouragement. And who can doubt that he who was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, experienced many more seasons of darkness and of heaven-sent relief than that which is recorded in the garden of Gethsemane? His so frequently retiring to pray alone, seems to prove this. But as it is quite manifest that his description of his iniquities laying hold upon him, is expressed in words most suitable to any burdened but awakened sinner, so the verses of my text are every way suitable to any converted soul looking back on the deliverance which God hath wrought out for him. "Waiting, I waited for Jehovah" (as verse 1 may be most literally rendered), expresses all the intense anxiety of a mind aroused to know the danger he is in, and the quarter whence his aid must come. "And he inclined unto me," expresses the bodily motion of one who is desirous to hear, bending forward attentively. "And he heard my cry."

"He brought me up also out of an horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,

And set my feet upon a rock;

He established my goings.

And he hath put a new song in my mouth,

Even praise unto our God:

Many shall see it, and fear,

And shall trust in the Lord."

He expresses the state of an unconverted man under the striking imagery of one who is in an horrible pit, and sinking in miry clay; while the change at conversion is compared to setting his feet upon a rock, and establishing his goings, and putting a new song in his mouth. Regarding, then, my text as a true and faithful picture of that most blessed change in state and character which, in Bible language, is called conversion, I proceed to draw from these words two simple but most important conclu

sions:

There can

1. The difficulty of conversion.—So difficult and superhuman is the work of turning a soul from sin and Satan unto God, that God only can do it; and, accordingly, in our text, every part of the process is attributed solely to him. "He brought me up out of an horrible pit, he took me from the miry clay, he set my feet upon a rock, he established my goings, and he put a new song in my mouth." God, and God alone, then, is the author of conversion. He who created man at first, alone can create him anew in Christ Jesus unto good works. And the reason of this we shall see clearly by going over the parts of the work here described. The first deliverance is imaged forth to us in the words: "He brought me up out of an horrible pit;" and the counterpart or corresponding blessing to that is, "He set my feet upon a rock." hardly be imagined a more hopeless situation than that of being placed, like Joseph, in a pit, and especially an horrible pit, or a pit of destruction, as the Psalmist calls it. Hemmed in on every side by damp and gloomy walls, with scarce an outlet into the open air, in vain you struggle to clamber up to the light and fresh atmosphere of the open day; you are a prisoner in the bowels of the earth, the tenant of a pit of horrors. Such is your state, if you be unconverted; you are lying in a pit of destruction; you are dead while you live-buried alive, as it were; dead in trespasses and sins, while yet you walk in them. You cannot possibly ascend to the light of day, and the fresh atmosphere above you; for the pit in which you are, is indeed your prison-house; and except you be drawn up from it by the cords of grace, it will usher you into that yawning pit which the Bible says is bottomless. Such is your state, if you be unconverted. You are under the curse; for cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them;" and you have never continued in any of these things, doing them from

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