thirsty land but yet more deeply will we prize the blessing, if growing love to our Father and Redeemer, more lively fear of our own hearts, warmer and more extended charity-give daily clearer proof that we are Christ's, by bringing forth "fruits worthy of repentance."

SERMON XIII.

HEAVENLY CONVERSATION.

PHILIPPIANS, iii. 20.

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also, we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the chapter from which the text is taken, the apostle St. Paul speaks in the strongest terms of condemnation of certain new converts, or pretended converts to Christianity, whose opinions and lives brought manifest scandal upon the religion they professed.

These were men who, having lately been Jews, had been convinced by the preaching of St. Paul that Jesus was the Christ; yet were so prejudiced in favour of the law of Moses, that instead of depending upon the

death of Jesus, as the only sufficient and meritorious cause of salvation, they held the observance of the Mosaic rites and ceremonies to be necessary, as if the death of Christ were a partial and imperfect cause of acceptance. The doctrine in itself was sufficient to make those who held it deserve the name of enemies to the cross of Christ. But it had besides, this further aggravation, of being a time-serving principle; taken up for ease and convenience, to procure favour with the Jews, and to prevent any persecutions from that quarter.

Nor was this the worst; these persons were as much averse to any mortification of their corrupt appetites and desires as they could be to bodily sufferings for the truth's sake; they would neither die for their religion nor live up to it. Profit and pleasure, the world and the flesh, had the whole of their thoughts and their affections. A disposition so contrary to that purity and contempt of the world, that seeking for the kingdom of heaven, to which both the example and doctrine of our blessed Saviour oblige all his disciples, that they might

well be called enemies to Christ who refuse thus to follow him; and to that cross which in no sense they could be prevailed upon to take up.

Many circumstances of the Christian religion are different now from what they then were; but can it be said that the lives of its professors are so? Do not many, do not multitudes of those who profess themselves Christians, betray the same sensual and worldly mind in the present age? Do not many employ the chief of their care in making provision for the world and the flesh; while not a few, by the most dissolute and soul-destroying intemperance, make their "belly their god, and glory in their shame ?" Are not men's desires, their time, and their pains, devoted to the advantages and delights of this present mortal state? And do they not, by a wretched negligence and blindness, place all their happiness on this side the grave; without any signs of regard to those hopes and promises which teach them to expect and seek for bliss in a future and distant state? Is it not, in the strictest sense of

the apostle's words, to mind earthly things, when, in truth, they mind nothing else? If then such degrading and fatal behaviour drew tears, as we read it did, from the good St. Paul, how can we see without concern, the scandal brought upon the best of doctrines, the monstrous difference between the lives of such believers and the true spirit of that gospel, which they pretend to make the rule of their faith and manners? How shall we bear to reflect upon the unspeakable danger and misery of those souls whose end must be destruction, in spite of all the methods of grace designed to save them from it? This is an occasion which calls for compassion more than any sufferings in body or in fortune: and with regard to our own preservation, very careful should we be not to be led away by the example of those many who live in contradiction to the gospel; but to form our dispositions and behaviour upon the model of those better and happier men who rightly feel the privileges they enjoy, and the obligations they lie under.

This will lead us to consider more par