6. From the view we have taken of the law, how great will be the mercy of God towards such as are finally pardoned and received to his favor! What a theme will the gospel system be to employ their meditations! The more they discover of the purity of the law and the reasonableness of its claims, the more they will see of their personal desert of punishment. They will discover more and more clearly that God has not suffered his Son to pour out his soul unto death to wash away offences of a trifling turpitude. The light of eternity will show that God is not dealing in unreal and unmeaning expressions, when he warns us of the dangerous tendency and guilty character of sin. While it will be seen that sin aimed at nothing less than the ruin of the sinner and the character and government of God, it will be seen also that the blood of Christ has cleansed every believer from the darkest stains. While ages after ages shall roll away, and the plan and extent of divine mercy shall be constantly unfolding, a sense of obligation, and a conception of the greatness of divine grace, will keep pace with the increase of light in the mind of every believer. 7. How many and how weighty are the motives that urge every sinner to repent, and accept of pardon in the name of Jesus! Fearful as the penalty of the law is, God has given every assurance that he is determined to execute it. Who among you can dwell with devouring fire? Who among you can dwell with everlasting burnings? If you would not meet the decisions of the judgment-day alone, and support the claims of the law with your own blood, accept the invitations of mercy without delay. Every thing calls upon you to awake. The law and the gospel, the shortness and uncertainty of life, all bid you open your eyes to the interests of your souls. What is it that you gain by crowding the subject from your minds, and heedlessly braving the threatenings of God. Consider what prevents you from repenting this moment, and think how it must appear when you shall look back upon it from the bar of judgment. Is it the urgency of your temporal concerns? A faithful attention to those interests need not hinder your repentance a moment. And if it did, what is your wealth, which you must soon leave, contrasted with the life or death of your immortal spirit? Is it your friends? Are you afraid of a sneer? Without repentance the soul is lost; and would you ever, while the recollection should exist, forgive yourself for venturing everlasting death for such a cause as this? Do you say that you do not know whether these things are true? Is it not time that you did know? The Bible was put into your hands that you might learn and feel the power of its evidence, that it is the word of God.

Do you plead the old and impious excuse that you are unable to repent? Will you dare to tell the Judge when you shall meet him at his bar “that he is a hard master?" Do you say that you will think of it to-morrow? God says, "to-day ;" and he may say, "thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." Your heart says, to-morrow, and the enemy of your souls says, to-morrow; but the voice of Jehovah and of your own conscience is, "Now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation." Which will you obey? It is time to look at this subject with seriousness. Does not the gospel bear every mark of being God's method of saving sinners, while it supports the law that condemns them? Has he sent his Son to die for you when your sins did not endanger you? Has he sent him to die that he might justify or save you in your sins? Will you neither believe what God hath said, nor what he hath done? Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?

BY SYLVESTER HOLMES,

NEW-BEDFORD, MASS.

THE MEASURE OF THE SINNER'S DUTY.

II CORINTHIANS, viii. 12.-For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that which a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.

THIS passage has primary, if not exclusive reference, to contributions made for the poor saints of Judea and other places. To give a new impulse to the liberality of the Corinthians, Paul told them what had been done by the churches of Macedonia. Lest the spirit of emulation, which was so prominent at Corinth, should be improperly awakened by what he had said, a rule of duty was given in the words of the text. Offerings made, with a willing mind, according to the ability of the giver, will be accepted without reference to other churches or individuals.

If the duty of man is to be regulated by his ability, in his religious charities, then duty and moral obligation in all cases must be determined by the same rule. The passage suggests the idea that,

THE DUTY OF MAN CAN NEVER EXCEED HIS ABILITY TO PERFORM.

A man may be criminal for his inability, but he never can be criminal for not doing that which is beyond his present ability. The man who, by prodigality, has wasted his estate, is criminal, and highly so; but when it is gone, he is no more criminal for not giving liberally, than if his estate had been buried in the ruins of an earthquake. The murderer is guilty and condemned for killing his neighbor, but when he is dead, he is no more to blame for not restoring him to life than if he had been killed by the lightning of heaven.

Moral obligation, then, depends on present ability to do the thing required. Acceptable obedience supposes the ability possessed is put forth, under the .control of a willing mind, in the performance of duty. Disobedience ever implies existing ability, which is not used for right purposes, because there is not a willing mind.

These remarks illustrate what is intended by that ability on which obligation depends. It is the actual possession of every thing requisite to the performance of duty, and all our duty, if we have a proper disposition of heart. In further illustration of the sentiment, I remark:

1. Nothing can be the duty of man, for the neglect of which he is totally incapable of being made to feel guilt and self-condemnation. There is in man a moral principle, which is capable of discerning between right and wrong, and charging home guilt for the slightest deviation from the rule of duty. From

various causes this moral principle may be darkened, paralyzed, and silenced; but when freed from embarrassment, as it must be in a future world, it will reproach the transgressor for the least offence. But this reprover, in the clearest light and the most active performance of its duty, cannot be made in this, or any other world, to condemn us for that which we could not have done with a willing mind. To state the argument in few words-there cannot be a neglect of duty without sin; but there is no sin in not doing that for which we have not the requisite natural ability—then that which we cannot perform, and consequently neglect with impunity, cannot be our duty.

2. The sentiment under consideration is sustained by the fact, that man cannot create natural ability. He ought, indeed, to cultivate and strengthen the talents God has given him; but it never was, and never can be his duty to create powers which God has in a sovereign manner withheld. Men are never commanded to add one cubit to their stature, change the color of their hair, or create for themselves eyes and ears, if born blind and deaf. It would be quite as impossible for man to furnish himself with a faculty of the mind, which he did not receive from the hand of nature, as to supply the lack of any bodily organ. Now, if something more than a disposition is needful to the performance of an action—give it what name you please call it natural ability, or what you will-if this needful something be not possessed, it cannot be a man's duty to perform an action which requires power, he has not and

cannot create.

3. The reasonableness of the Divine law offers further evidence of the truth suggested by the text. Admit that which it would be infidelity to deny, that the law of the Lord is perfect, and our position is put among the truths which duration will not change. That the commands of God are just, may be proved by the source from which they come, the nature of the duties they enjoin, and their application to successive generations of men, in the endless variety of circumstances in which they are found. But the justice of a law always supposes the power of obedience in him to whom such law is given. A just law only requires and prohibits those things which grow out of the relations of intelligent beings, and accords with principles which were wholly independent of such law. A deviation from the strictest adherence to these principles would make a law radically defective, let the source be what it might from which it came. It is perfectly clear, then, that a reasonable law measures out the duty of man in exact proportion to his ability, never requiring any more nor any less than he is able to perform.

4. The sanctions of the law and the threatenings of God's word all speak in vindication of the doctrine before us. The Bible never condemns men, nor threatens condemnation except for neglecting that which might have been done, or doing that which might have been avoided. The prospect of heaven is held out to men, not in connexion with impossibilities, but in connexion with those things which they can do with a willing mind. On the other hand condemnation is written against them, for that alone, which they did freely and voluntarily. If God does threaten men with present evils and future destruction, and these threatenings always respect voluntary actions, then every

denunciation of the Scriptures proves that the duty of man never exceeds his powers to obey.

5. In support of the position we have taken, we have the testimony of the wise and good in all ages, and in a future day every intelligent being will give his assent to its truth. It has already been shown that no dividing line between right and wrong, but that assumed in the text, could ever commend itself to the understanding and conscience of men, and that no law but one formed on such principles of moral obligation can be holy and good. Then as the wise and good in all ages have approved of the law, and fully justified all God has required of men, it will follow that the duty of man never has exceeded the bounds prescribed in the text, nor has God ever required of man that which he has not given him ability to perform. That of which good men are convinced in this world, all will be convinced of in the world to come, that God condemns only for the neglect of that which they might have done. If the enlightened and free exercise of reason will constrain every rational being to approve of the rule of duty, as perfectly equal and just, then that rule must require precisely what man is capable of performing.

6. The joys of the righteous in heaven and the sorrows of the impenitent in hell, go to prove the truth of our doctrine. Let the conviction be removed from the redeemed, that justice without mercy would have assigned them a different place, and their loudest notes of praise would be silenced. On the other hand, the keenest, if not the only pains of the lost in hell, are created by the inwrought and never yielding conviction that they perish for doing that which they were not compelled to do, and neglecting that which they had the power of doing. If the suffering in hell could feel for an hour that mighty power, and not undeviating justice, put them there, it would be an hour of alleviation. Then it is perfectly plain that fallen angels and wicked men will eternally feel that they are where they ought to be. Who but must see that every note of praise in heaven, and every pain in hell, go to prove that the duty of man is measured by his ability, never imposing any more than he is capable of performing?

Our subject suggests the following inferences:

1. Is the duty of man measured by his ability, then the entire free agency of man is acknowledged by God in all his dealings with him. By free agency we understand the power and liberty of following the supreme inclinations of the heart. Such freedom is perfectly consistent with entire dependence—with an unbroken succession of volitions and actions of the same moral character,and no less consistent with the indispensable connexion between choice and action. As the Bible ever asserts man as thus free, it requires him to do that, and only that, which he can do with a willing mind.

2. If the duty of man commences and ends with his ability to perform, then he is able to do every thing God has required of him. The opinion of natural men is both false and destructive, that they have many pious desires, but are unable to execute them. Men with these views may be alarmed, but they never can be convinced of sin, till they see and feel that the only reason

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why they have not repented, believed in Christ, loved God supremely, and made themselves a new heart, has been the voluntary choice of their own will. I most sincerely believe in the doctrine of entire dependence, and yet I fear the doctrine is too often stated in a manner to give the sinner wrong views of his difficulty and quiet his conscience. A distinction should here be made which is constantly observed in the government of every family,—I mean a distinction between ability to perform a given action and a disposition to perform such action. It may be said it is idle to talk of ability where there is not a willing mind :—then it is idle to talk of accountability in an unholy man.

3. The seat of human depravity is manifest from our subject. That in man, which chooses his object of supreme affection, and determines and directs his actions, is the seat of his depravity. As the authority and influence of the will are extended to every power of the mind and body, when this is corrupted and alienated, the effects are seen in all over which it presides. The difficulty does not lie in a darkened understanding, and dimness of moral perception, but in a "WILL NOT" in relation to all God has required. The understanding of the sinner will be enlightened, and his conscience made quick and powerful, in hell; but his depravity will remain. It is important that men should know what we mean when we say they are totally depraved. Many objections to this doctrine owe their origin to the indistinct manner of presenting it. If I have a deadly disease about me, let me know its seat and symptoms.

4. It is perfectly manifest from what has been said that no new powers and faculties are given or needed in regeneration. If the duty of man is and ever has been limited to his ability, then all he needs or receives in regeneration is a disposition to do what he was always able to do. Grace applies the remedy where the disease holds its empire,-the man is only made willing to serve God according to that which he hath, and not according to that which he hath not. We see then why cold speculative reasoning, which goes only to the understanding, will simply put in order the furniture of the head, and why the most eloquent lectures on the beauties of virtue and the deformities of vice, will only make clear the outside of the man. The sharpest arrows of truth must be directed to the very point where the Holy Ghost does his work in regeneration.

5. If the duty of man is limited by his ability to perform, then the justice of his condemnation is demonstrated. In this world men may and do find fault when told that they are in danger of future and endless condemnation. Men generally believe their sins few, and a multitude suppose they have done as well as they could. But the truth is, no man has done as well as he could who has not done all his duty. This truth will appear most clearly another day. In this world men have a thousand reasons for their impiety, but in another world they will all be resolved into one, when it shall be said, Bring hither mine enemies that would not that I should reign over them, and slay them before me. The controversy between God and man will then be stripped of all that ignorance, pride, and sophistry have drawn about it, and be exhibited as it is, directly between the heart and a perfectly holy law.