ings the other way hinder, and passion hinders, and a whole' insurrectionary host of feelings muster against the change. Well, be it granted that a troop of joys must be put to flight, and a whole host of pleasant feelings be subdued. Then, what is lost? Is honour lost? Is fortune lost? Is God's providence scared away? Hath the world slipt from beneath your feet, and does the air of heaven no longer blow fresh around you? Has life deceased, or are your faculties of happiness foregone? Change, the dread of change, that is all. The change of society and habits, with the loss of some few perishable gaieties.

Now let us reason together. Is not that as great a change when your physician chambers you up, and restricts your company to nurses and your diet to simples? Is not that as great a change when you leave the dissipated city, outworn with its excitements, and live with solitude and inconvenience in your summer quarters? And is not that a greater change which stern law makes, when it mures up our person and gives us outcasts to company with? And where is the festive life of those who sail the wide ocean; and where the gaieties of the campaigning soldier; and how does the wandering beggar brook his scanty life? If for the sake of a pained limb you will undergo the change, will you not for the removal of eternal pains of spirit and flesh? If for a summer of refreshment amongst the green of earth, and the freshness of ocean, ye will undergo the change, will ye not for the rich contents of heaven? And if at the command of law ye will, and if for gain the sailor will, and for honour the soldier will, and for necessity the strolling beggar will; men and brethren, will ye not, to avoid hell, to reach heaven, to please the voice of God, to gain the inheritance of wealth and honour, and to feed your spirit's starved necessitiesOh men, will ye not muster resolution to enterprize the change?

Bring manly fortitude to this question, I entreat you, and look it in the face; compare these two alternatives-the world's principles and customs-Christ's principles and customs. When we entered into life we were equally strangers to both, predisposed to have our own will in every thing, and reluctant to resign it either to the institutions of our ancestors, or to the institutions of Christ. By a greater aptitude of nature, and the neighbourhood of more examples, and the presence of more immediate rewards and punishments, and a youth of continual training, we have grown into the school of the world where we are enchanted and spell

bound. I know not with what, but sure we are bewitched, or with thraldom worn down and unmanned.' 'Tis not better fortune that holds us, that I deny ; nor more accomplishments of mind, nor larger bounds of feeling, nor sublimer thoughts, nor more generous actions, nor more peaceful moments; which I affirm to be all on the other side. What then is the mighty gain? Next to nothing. A few gay smiles of companionship, a few momentary gratifications dear bought at the price of after-thoughts and after depres sions; a few heady excesses of spirit, and extravagances of language, and irregularities of conduct; that is nearly the sum total of the benefit. Are you free? Not a jot. You are the slaves of the customs, and dare not on your peril depart from one of them. You call religion a bondage; yes, it is the bondage of angels strong and seraphs blessed; Nature's well-pleased bondage to her Maker, the creature's reverence for his Creator; but yours, yours is a bondage to idle floating customs, narrow rules of men like yourselves, whose statutes enslave you. You have no privileges worth naming. You have heaven forfeited. You have hell forestalled: Pitiful drugery. And this is what you are in love with and cannot leave. So were the swinish herd enamoured of Circe's cup, forgetful of their former noble selves.

I wish I could disenchant you, that you might perceive the blessed truth, and love it-which I see not, but I may, seeing God grants his blessing to the weakest instrument. Let me speak a moment of the nature of this change; and if ever, now God send us persuasive words.

Ye take up the thing amiss when you think, as is too often represented, that it is a change to be succeeded in upon the spur of resolution. A beginning it must have, and that most noticeable when from leaving God's face and favour, we turn timorously to seek them again. But for its completion the age of Methuselah were insufficient; men are never converted, but always converting; saints never built up, but always building up. Now herein you do greatly err. Unless you change and master nature at once, you give it up for hopeless, and fall down into the quietus of man's total inability and forlornness. This is the grossness of stupidest error. Knowledge of God's will is not derived at once, cases of conscience are not settled at once, nor is the ability to overcome conferred at once. The conversion is the new birth, but to be born is not to be the man complete in feature and in mind, which groweth out of knowledge, experience, discipline of youth, observation of life, and the thousand ap

pointed steps between the almost unconscious babe and the accomplished man. Even so, according to cur humble view of the matter, the new birth is, but the first germ of religion in the soul, which hath to be cherished, nursed, guarded, trained, and taught by methods and means of grace as manifold as natural strength is reared by. Therefore, so that your souls are longing after God, your ears drinking in his council, you feel moving, though faint, still moving in the path, be of good cheer, go on and prosper. Nay, so that you are losing conceit of sin by reason of better conceptions, and waxing in fear of future issues, and meditating your mortality more, it is symptomatic of good, go on and prosper. Despair not because you are not perfect, neither turn back because you frequently fall.

And ye advanced Christians, do not despise this day of small things in a younger brother, neither go to impose upon him all your burdens, nor to minister the strongest meat which you can digest; but give God-speed to any endeavour after good, however small; his very aspirations despise not, his imperfections do not sorely rebuke. Strengthen the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees confirm. Strengthen by encouragement and support, do not by rebuke and censure drive him to distraction.

Nevertheless, though this change may appear in various quarters of the horizon of a sinner's thoughts and interests, there are marks in its progression which may be laid down. Discontent with oneself, a fear of God's displeasure, a desire after the knowledge of his will, an acquiescence in his estimate of our sinfulness, a joyful reception of the Saviour, a growing peace, and with it a strict obedience, a sense of great weakness, a seeking for help by prayer, perusal of the Word, and waiting for the Spirit, and a progress in the way everlasting these things, not by order, as if there were an infallible order, which some in their witless unobservance of Christian life do imagine, but certainly, most certainly these marks will reveal themselves in the course of the progression; and such to whom these truths are not disclosing or disclosed are not christianizing or christianized.

Allow me, then, to gather up the whole that hath been said and dismiss the subject. This world into which we are born age after age, is marshalled into two parts-those who give heed to the Lord's revelations and thereunto conform their lives-those who give not heed to them, but set up a system of life according to hereditary law, honour and custom. To the one or the other we must submit, there is

not one in a thousand who dissents from both, and setteth up for himself. Whichever you destine your children to, to that breed them like a business. Those that have not been so trained, but find themselves confederate with the world, have only to enter themselves to the school of Christ, nothing doubting of success, if they consult and obey the word of God. They shall feel it new, and therefore seemingly more restrictive, but in truth not more restrictive than the old, but otherwise more liberal, more generous, more ennobling, more peaceful and more joyful.

Come over, cast in your lot with the saints, you have every thing to gain-peace of conscience, a divine joy, a fellowship with God, a special providence, a heritage of promise and blessing, a triumphant death, and a crown of everlasting life. The choice of men are here-the prime specimens of manhood, the royal priesthood and chosen generation of mankind-and worth domestic, with Piety, her guardian genius, is here; and worth public, with Charity, her guardian genius, is here; and enterprize heroic, with Faith, her guardian genius, is here; and the chief fathers of science and knowledge have likewise clave with the saints and the greatest inventors, the inventors of reformation in all worthy matters, are here; apostles and prophets and patriarchs are here; and, finally, the first-born of every creature who is God over all blessed for ever! Amen.

ORATION IV.

JOHN V. 39. SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES:

THE OBEYING OF THE ORACLES OF GOD.

WE have discoursed upon the preparation necessary for holding intercourse with the word of God, summoning your souls to it as to a most honourable interview, a feast of heavenly wisdom. We have detailed the place which you occupy, and the part which you should perform, when listening to the voice of your Creator, and receiving the law at his mouth-giving ear as the light did when first summoned from its primeval residence; or the sun, and the moon, and the stars and as mute Nature listens still. We have searched into that strong reluctance which we bear to the divine law, and sought to overcome it by the fearful picture of the desolation which overtakes transgressors ;-arguing sore between the world and the word of God, and praying you to be reconciled for the sake of Christ. Heaven grant that we may not have spoken in vain: and now that we are to address ourselves to a loftier argument, may his Spirit fill us with knowledge and affection, that his mysterious and momentous truths may suffer no disparagement from our weak conception and feeble utterance. The argument for which we now pray to be enabled, is the good fruit which will accrue to all who search and entertain and obey the Scriptures after the manner we have set forth. This we shall display under three heads: the knowledge obtained; the life of heavenly enterprise begotten; and the eternal reward to be gained.

The eternal power and Godhead of our Creator, says St. Paul, speak through the things which are made, and there is no doubt that the oracle of the works of God is loud in commendation of his power and providence. But it is not easy to be explored by the multitude, little enlightened by knowledge, and much taken up with the necessary avocations of life. And those who are conversant with it, do generally in the act of consulting stop short in admiration of the temple which he inhabits, paying their reverence to its richness and