men.

Now saith our apostle, "If we receive the witness of man, the witness of God is greater." The inference from the comparison is this, that the rejection of his witness is as much more unreasonable and sinful, than the rejection of credible human testimony, as "the heavens are higher than the earth, or his ways than our ways."

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Condemn man as justly or as loudly as you will, for not believing his fellow-men, and he still has this extenuation, that they are his fellow-men— men of like passions" with others and with himself; that their senses may deceive them, or their prejudices warp them; that their motives may be unsound, and their aim unhallowed. But such extenuation finds no place, when God is the witness, and man the objector. From his very nature it follows, that the witness cannot err, and will not deceive. And the objector has not even the shadow of justification for his cavillings. He knows nothing, and therefore should say nothing. On the one side, there is infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, infinite power, and infinite holiness. On the other, there is the profundity of ignorance, the liability to err, the weakness of dependence, and the pollution of sin. I leave it to you, my readers, to perceive and feel how the sin deepens in aggravation, when it is man, ignorant, erring, dependent, sinful man, who would "make God a liar;" the all-wise, infallible, self-existent, holy, omnipotent God!

Even we, frail and fallible though we are, scorn to have our word impugned, as though that word were essential truth. In the worldling's esteem, the questioning of his veracity is "the unpardonable sin," which can scarcely be washed out, even in the crimson stream of blood. And yet we deny what God has asserted; and put our miserable sophistries and pitiful objections in the scale against his revelations, yea, refuse to believe him on his word and on his oath,* and expect that he will abide the blasphemous insult, and even admit the offender to his equal heaven! Surely this is presumption indeed!

It is not, however, unbelief in the abstract, but unbelief in connexion with its consequences, that offends and calls for punishment.

These consequences naturally, if not necessarily, lead to rejection. They that were travelling towards the earthly Canaan "could not enter in, because of unbelief." Why? Because that unbelief made them doubt God's own testimony to the value of that "good land" of promise-distrust his promised aid in its conquest and acquisition-magnify all the difficulties and obstacles in the way, while it caused their own courage to wane away, and their hearts to melt within them, because of fear; and a base and creeping servility of spirit to come over them; so that they thought

"See Hebrews.

Egypt and its "iron bondage," the wilderness with its privations, its perils, and its terrors, bettor than God's own land, because that land could only be purchased by courage and exertion. And precisely such is the influence of unbelief upon men as travellers in the vast and dreary wilderness of earth, to a land of celestial rest. They do not believe what God has told them of "the rest which remaineth to his people." How then should they either desire or seek it? All holy and inspiriting motive, all disposition and ability for saving effort is taken away. Their incredulity cramps their spiritual energies, represses all the aspirings after earthly excellence or future immortality, which ever and anon begin to arise within them-and it makes them low and grovelling; willing to creep along upon the polluted surface of this earth, and to batten upon the garbage of its food, and to drivel along until their death-doom arrives; and then to perish and be forgotten like the beasts of the field, and to mingle their dust with the dust to which their very souls have cleaved! Surely it must be, that because of unbelief men cannot enter into the heavenly Canaan.

And in this exclusion there is nothing arbitrary. It is the necessary result of the principle itself. "The door" indeed "is shut;" but it is unbelief which shuts it. He who does not believe in a God, will not serve God here, and cannot, therefore,

consistently be supposed to go unto God hereafter. He who believes not in a Saviour, cuts himself off from all the soul-constraining motives of a Saviour's Gospel. He who has no settled conviction of the agency of a sanctifying Spirit, will probably "do despite to that Spirit," if he does not rush into the horrible impiety, the "unpardonable sin," of " blaspheming against the Holy Ghost."

The wonder, then, is not that the unbelieving are shut out from heaven; but the wonder would be, if they were admitted there. Strange indeed would be the translation, irreconcileable alike with the reputed character of God, and the expectations as well as capabilities of man, if, from utter godlessness, both in creed and practice, they should pass to that heaven which is filled with the glory of the triune Jehovah, where his will is supreme, and where the redeemed from earth, and the spirits of heaven, find their bliss in his service!

When unbelief becomes the distinguishing characteristick, the dominant sin of the soul, the apostle, with much propriety, terms it the evil heart of unbelief. Intellectual scepticism is sufficiently ruinous. It unsettles principles, it takes away motive, and leaves the poor doubter the sport of every wind of thought or passion, at the mercy of all temptations, the creature of evervarying external circumstances or inward impulses. But spiritual unbelief, the unbelief of the

heart, is both more guilty and more fatal. Its sin is against light and against knowledge. The understanding is convinced, or, at the least, its decisions are not against the truth; but the unbelieving heart forms to itself a new decision; pushes away the truth, because it is hateful; embraces error, because it is pleasing; neglects the duties which "the finger of God" has written upon its own fleshly tablets, rushes into sin, because it loves sin, and acts as though it had said in its foolishness," there is no God."

The distinction to which allusion has just been made between intellectual scepticism and the unbelief of the heart, is exceedingly important, although too generally forgotten or unknown. Popularly, it is in every case traced to the head. It is imagined that there is some natural obtuseness of mind, some strange obliquity in its views, resulting from its original conformation, or the warping influence to which it has been subjected in the process of training; and the whole of the difficulty and sin is, therefore, resolved into an error of opinion. The sceptic comforts himself with the thought, that as he cannot force himself to think thus or thus, he is consequently altogether irresponsible for sentiment. The world charitably pities rather than blames his error, and as charitably hopes that it will be forgiven. Christian friends, in their zeal to convert him to better views, direct all their efforts to the head, and hope,