the reward of its self-denial and faithfulness. To be carnally minded is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace.'

Now, finally, as this spiritual character is essential unto salvation from the wrath to come, I hold myself called upon to open up the channels through which it flows into the soul, and the mighty operation by which it is begotten. In doing which office for the sake of immortal souls, I think it first necessary, to declare and avow, that nature hath in herself no strength, nor the wisdom of the world any guidance for that spiritual course of life whereof I am to disclose the pure fountains. Nature unassisted and the world unsubdued are its greatest enemies; and if you expect to carry any one point in it by ordinary resources of knowledge, or by ordinary force of resolution, you will labour in vain to the end of your days, and die worse than you began. This may appear wild and mystical to those who have not studied or tried the regeneration of life and character which Christ requires, but it is in perfect unison with the nature of man. I allow to nature all her powers, and to the world all her accomplishments of grace and honour, and freely yield to them the credit of being able of their ownselves, unaided by God, to bring forth all the specimens of philosophic, intellectual, moral, and patriotic men, whereof ancient and modern times can boast. The greater part of those noble characters, in peace and war, which fill the pages of history; the greater part of those who flourish under the eye and patronage of honour and glory in our own times, your statesmen, your scholars, your uncorrupted senators, your generous philanthropists, are the offspring of cultivated powers of nature and favourable aspects of the world; and when I resign these excellent shows of character up to the province of gifted nature and happy fortune, it will be seen that I mean not to disparage the powers of natural life, while, I say again, that they avail not the least, but, on the other hand, impede in producing the spiritual life, which is indispensible to salvation. It is not to disparage nature and the world that I preface my inquiry with this avowal of their weakness, but it is to withdraw the mind from these delusory regions of power and wisdom, to the proper region, whence alone are to be had that power and wisdom which furnish the spiri tual man for every good word and work.

Had the Almighty kept aloof from all interference in our affairs, and given no supplement to our knowledge, or lent no aid to our endeavours, then is it not manifest that our

theology would have been what it was in Greece or Rome or ancient Britain, what it is still in nations that know not the revelations of God? Our distinctions of learning, of policy, of heroism, of rank and of fortune, might perhaps have been much what they were in ancient civilized times; but it is most evident, that of spiritual life, which consists of love to God and living to his glory, we could have known not a glimmering; knowing neither God, nor wherein his glory consists, nor how he was to be served. It is to the pains he has taken to inform us, and ingratiate himself with human nature, to the revelations he has made of his love and amiable character, of his free forgiveness of our sins, of his ample reward and plentiful help to holiness of life, that we are to impute any progress we make in a new nature and a nearer resemblance to his divine image. Therefore the Almighty, the doing of the Almighty, the free grace and gift of God, not nature's innate powers, or the world's patronage and approbation, is what we have to thank for any progress we have made-is what we have to look to for any progress we have to make in the life which scripture calleth spiritual or divine; and which I have declared to be the only deliverance from wrath to come.

The evangelical preachers therefore are right in refering all past progress, and deriving all hope of future progress from free unmerited grace, from the influence and power of the Spirit of God; and the moral preachers who uphold man's power to aid and abet the work, and man's right to share in the glory, are doubtless in the wrong, inasmuch as human nature, in her most gifted forms and in her most favourable moods and conditions, did never win any way towards the divinity, till the divinity himself gave the knowledge to inform her, the impulse to move her, and the motives to carry her on. But the evangelical preachers, as they are called, though right in the main drift of their discoursing, are defective, it seems to me, in the wisdom of their details; and herein, as I think, is their chief defect, in giving too little weight to the word of God, which they hold to be a dead inefficient letter until the Spirit of God put meaning into its passages. This is at once to lock up the great storehouse of truth, which God hath in every part accommodated to the wants and faculties of man, and to leave the world in as starving a state as ever. We are out at sea once more, and have no star to guide our way. I, as a preacher, cannot move a step with an unregenerate man, if so be that we cannot come into contact upon the word of

God. I must shut up the prophecy and seal the testimony, if so be that to his understanding it is a blank and unmeaning legend; and we must go a cruising over the handy works and providence of God, if so be that his word is dark to us as darkest midnight. Now I do not wish to go to war with the evangelical preachers, I love them so well; but I cannot help challenging them, why they preach as they wisely do, the truths of Christ crucified to the unregenerate, if so be the unregenerate can by no means lay hand upon any of these truths. All their practice confutes their theory, that the word of God is a riddle unresolvable, a mystery unsearchable, which cannot be found out by the understanding of men. And yet, neither are they altogether wrong in this matter, upon which it is very important to apprehend the exact truth, more especially as it is a truth most easy to be apprehended, and most necessary to the progress of spiritual life, and the deliverance of the wrath to come.

They are right, in as far as this goes, that the truth revealed in the word of God concerning his own nature, concerning our redemption, concerning creation and providence and futurity, concerning the duty of man to his Maker, and our duty to each other in a spiritual sense; that all this truth, human nature could never have discovered; and therefore she ought for ever to acknowledge herself debtor to God for all the effects which it produceth upon her own condition and upon the condition of the world. Therefore, here again we are at one, as to the party to whom all the gratitude and glory should be rendered. But so far from giving into their position, that the Bible is a sealed book to men in their natural estate, I hold this diametrically opposite position, That there is not a book which, being read with all the faculties of the natural man, will produce upon the natural man so strong an impression; will so exalt his imagination, so convince his mind, so rebuke his sins, so captivate his affections, so overawe his wilfulness, arrest all the thoughts of his mind, and touch all the feelings of his heart. That in truth it is an arrow, or rather a quiver full of arrows, aimed with a divine dexterity, to strike into the inward parts of men. And, if any one ask me to prove this position, I have my own experience to refer to, which, with a constant witness, testifieth that God's word hath been quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword; and I have the experience of all converted men of whom I have read, in whose conversion the word of God was the main

instrument; I have David's and Paul's constant declarations, that it is able to make one wise unto salvation.

Now, when I have often urged upon the Evangelical brethren the necessity of pressing their people to the word of God as a very mentor in all cases and conditions of life, and the folly of preaching them away from it, by casting clouds and darkness and mystery around its approach, stating unto them what hath been stated above, they have always met me with this reply; If the book of God be intelligible to natural men, how come they to remain so ignorant of it and so disaffected to it? To this I answer, that they read it but little, many of them not at all; that when they do read it, they read it often for form's sake, and consequently derive no benefit, because they seek none; although even then it sendeth quivering thoughts into their inmost breasts: or they read it for taste's sake; and are gratified in all the critical and imaginative parts of the mind, farther than which they aimed not; but if they read for edification's sake, to know God and Christ and human responsibility, then it never fareth to any reader to read in vain. But what fruit of conviction cometh out of it, they ask? That is another question, to be touched immediately. Yet that seed was as good seed, as able to strike root and bear increase, which fell by the way-side, among thorns, and on the face of barren rocks, as that which fell into the genial soil: so also are those impressions made upon the natural man by his study of the Word, as fit to come forth into the new birth and the spiritual life, as those which actually do generate in spiritual men; but they hold not good, because of counteracting influences, kindred to those in the parable; the devil plucks them away, the hot sun of lust and pleasure scorches them, or the thorns of worldly avocations choke them. Yet, though they issue not in fruit, by these impressions, which this Word doth carry in every bosom, and which God would bless were his blessing cared for or sought for, by these impressions will natural men be judged and condemned in the terrible day of the Lord. Let not God's word be blamed, therefore, which is like the sun to the inward soul, heating it and inflaming it to what is good; but let the wicked preferences which men give to every other impression, of pleasure, vanity, interest and worldly occupation, be blamed, and let them be taught to relax their love of these, that the other may grow into its natural strength and fruitfulness.

Do I, then, while I thus would unveil the written word of God as a document of salvation, and a patent of ever

lasting life to every one who looketh upon it with a reflective mind; do I assert that the natural man seeth into it as deeply as doth the spiritual man? No. Neither doth one spiritual man see into it as another spiritual man. 'Tis a mere glimmering, a faint ray and streak of dawn we perceive at first, but not the less to be noted or prized as the hope of coming day. It groweth and groweth till the whole mind be overspread, and the whole heart be warmed, and the whole life fructified. It waxeth more useful as we use it more. According as we do more, we understand more. According as we enter into the obedience of it we taste its more exquisite sweetness. As nature yieldeth, the spirit quickeneth; as the old man waxeth fainter under his crucifixion, the new man waxeth stronger to his resurrection. And what needeth there more talk about this simple matter, than to say with the Psalmist, The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clear, enduring for ever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Therefore, so far from shutting up and sealing the precious word of God with any cover, we open it to your minds and hearts as a very mine of treasure and inexhaus tible storehouse of food, the armory out of which you are to be equipped, defended, reinforced, made valorous and victorious in spiritual life. History feedeth the natural knowledge of nian; commerce feedeth his natural appetites with all the various produce of the earth; poetry feedeth his fancy; courts cultivate his policy; war his valorous chivalry; and arts his inexhaustible skill; by the combination of which, and other active agents, all the varieties of character, from the king to the peasant, are forged out. But, alas! not one of them availeth one jot to call forth the spiritual man. They will stifle and slay his life when it hath been procreated; to give it birth, they avail no more than they do to restore life again to the cold clay of one deceased. So true are the averments of Scripture, that this world is dead in trespasses and sins, and that the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God. These forms of manhood, forged in the great workshop of the world, never dream that there is a nobler form still; and when it cometh out in its gracefulness before them, they know not its worth, but hold it in derision and tread it under foot. And yet there