not your own, for ye are bought with a price, therefore he adds, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which are God's.”

The name of Jesus is not to be to us, like the allah of the Mahometans-a talisman or an amulet, to be worn on the arm as an external badge, merely, and symbol of our profession, and to preserve us from evil, by some mysterious and unintelligible potency, but, it is to be engraven deeply on the heart, and manifest its effects on the life and manners.

It is the grand, essential, practical characteristic of true Christians, that relying on the promises to repenting sinners, of acceptance through a Redeemer, they have renounced and abjured all other masters, and have heartily and unreservedly devoted themselves to God. This is indeed the very thing which baptism daily represents to us; like the father of Hannibal, we bring our infant to the altar, we consecrate him to the service of his proper owner, and vow in his name, eternal hostilities, against all the enemies of his salvation. After the same

manner, Christians are become the sworn enemies of sin, they will hold no parley with it, they will allow it in no shape, they will admit it to no composition. The war which they have denounced against it, is cordial, universal, irreconcilable. But this is not all; it is their determined purpose, to yield themselves without reserve, to the commands of their rightful Sovereign, by bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

A second error, into which we are apt to slide, is, that when we think we have performed the conditions upon which the reward is offered, we attribute our obtaining it solely to our own performances, and not to that which is the beginning, and foundation, and cause of the whole, the kindness, and bounty of the original offer.

This error, though it comes forward with a sober face, is perilous in the extreme, because it dispenses with those principles which are absolutely necessary to form the Christian character, and claims the heavenly inheritance as a debt, which is bestowed upon us by an act of the most unmerited grace.

Then, as to moral virtue, if that can save those who are not believers in Jesus, it must follow, that man never was lost, and that Christ need not have come into the world.

To shew how clearly the church has given her decision upon this important point, I beg to call the attention of the reader to the xi. Article:-"We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our works or deservings: wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the homily of justification."

The Christian revelation is distributed into two great divisions, its doctrines and its precepts; its doctrines are the foundation, upon which obedience to its precepts is established; its precepts furnish materials for the superstructure, which is to be raised upon the basis of its doctrines. It is the practice of the infidel, the sceptic, the modern philosopher, to commend the moral precepts of Christianity, whilst he discards

or neglects the articles of the Christian faith. But let us not suffer ourselves to be deceived; upon this plan we may practise morality, but it will not be Christian morality.

For it is not merely the things taught, the matter of the instruction, which distinguishes evangelical morality from all others, (though in this, indeed, as well as in all other respects, it is without a rival,) but it is distinguished still more signally by the principle on which it is taught, by the foundation on which it is established, by the motive, which it brings with it to animate the heart of the agent, and to give activity and energy to his exertions. It is the first and great commandment of the gospel, that we "love God," wherefore?" because he first loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." It is the second great commandment, that we "love our brethren," wherefore is this again? "because God so loved us."

And if the use of the affections in religion in general, are conformable to reason, it will not require many words to

prove, that our blessed Saviour is the proper object of them. We know, that love, gratitude, joy, hope, trust, (the affections in question,) have all their appropriate objects. But if these appropriate objects be not exhibited, it is perfectly unreasonable to expect that the correspondent passions should be excited. If we ask for love, in the case of an object which has no excellence, or desirableness ;for gratitude, where no obligation has been conferred; for joy, where there is no just cause for self-congratulation; for hope, where nothing is expected; for trust, where there exists no ground of reliance; this would be to demand effects, without the means of producing them; but is this the case here? are we ready to say, in the language of the avowed enemies of our Saviour,-" there is no beauty that we should desire him?" Is it no obligation, that "he took upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross?" Is it no cause of joy, that to us is born a Saviour, by whom we may be delivered from the powers of darkness, and be made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light? Can there be a hope comparable to