pardon and peace through the blood and righteousness of the Son of God; while they were proud of the excellence of their righteousness, you will be humbled because of the imperfection of yours.

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Nor is it a matter of indifference whether you thus excel them or not. Except your righteousness do thus exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." In the present state of the Church, the faithful and the hypocrites are mingled; and it is not in man, who can look no farther than on the outward part, to make the distinction; but the period is approaching when this distinction shall be made, when an everlasting separation shall be made between the polluted and the pure, between the sincere and the hypocritical worshippers of God. The tares for a season grow among the wheat, and at present it is difficult to distinguish them; but ere long the harvest shall come, when the tares shall be burned, and the wheat be gathered. In that day of the revelation of all things, no virtue but that which has exceeded the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees shall be recognised or acknowledged, for no other can qualify us for the enjoyments of immortality. The righteousness of the Pharisee may impose upon short-sighted man; but it cannot deceive the mind-inspecting eye of God. The righteousness of the Pharisee may comport well enough with the sensuality and selfishness of the world; but it is altogether incompatible with the pure and benevolent exercises of heaven. Heaven is the region of holiness and peace, and into it no

thing polluted or malevolent can enter. If ye aspire to that habitation, you must acquire, while here, a meetness for it. There the Divine glory is displayed; but how shall they be fitted to behold it who have lived estranged from the fear and the love of God? There all the wise and holy who ever sojourned in the vale of tears are gathered around the throne of God and of the Lamb; but how shall they be fitted to mingle with that pure and happy family, and bear a part in their high and holy exercises, who have had no heartfelt communion with the children of God here below, and who imposed upon them by an elaborate system of duplicity and fraud? It is impossible. Into that holy place "there shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." Since, then, we have a Judge to whose all-searching eye the secrets of every human heart are open, and who "will," one day, "bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart," let it be our daily study to be “Israelites indeed," in whom shall be found "no guile ;" and let us give diligence to make our calling and election sure, for so an entrance shall be ministered unto us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

To animate you, my friends, in this honourable and holy effort to exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, there are many considerations of the most powerful and efficient kind. You are not left to struggle alone and unbefriended with the world, the devil, and the flesh. You have the

promise of the Holy Spirit to enlighten your understandings, to purify your will, and to renew your hearts. If you pray for it, strength from on high shall be afforded to uphold you amid the labours of obedience. And above there is a crown of glory, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for them that fight the good fight, that keep the faith, and that love the appearing of their Lord. Let us, therefore, lest we come short of this exceeding great and precious promise, keep in mind the indispensable qualification for the inheritance; and while, on the one hand, we renounce all dependence on our own righteousness as a ground of merit or a title to heaven, and rely implicitly on the atonement which Christ has offered for human guilt, let us beware of deceiving ourselves by thinking that the promise of immortality is ours, while we are destitute of that holiness, without which we can never be fit for the inheritance of the saints in light. Wherefore, beloved, be diligent, that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless." And "be not weary in well-doing: for, in due season, ye shall reap, if ye faint not."

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SERMON III.

2 CORINTHIANS, v. 17.-" If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

IN the exposition of the epistolary writings of the New Testament, two very opposite methods of interpretation have been adopted. While one class of commentators regard these invaluable compositions as of universal and perpetual application to the condition and circumstances of man, others view them simply in reference to those societies or individuals to whom they were primarily addressed, and seek the illustration of the statements and exhortations of the apostles in the history and condition of the Jews and Heathens of those early times. According to these interpreters, the Inspired Writers directed their attention to the state and character of their contemporaries alone; and the delineation which they give of the corruption and depravity of man is to be verified by a reference to the moral history of the nations of antiquity; while that change of heart and life, of which the apostles say so much, and to which they attach supreme importance, is regarded as merely emancipation from the errors and abominations of heathenism. By this mode of interpretation a large portion of the New

Testament becomes useless and uninteresting to us, and some of its most solemn and affecting statements are deprived of their importance, and rendered inapplicable to those on whom the ends of the world are come. These sacred treasures are thus viewed merely as the record of the state of the world before the promulgation of Christianity, and of the effects which the introduction of it produced. When the Apostle Paul, for example, tells the Ephesians that they were" dead in trespasses and sins," his statement has a reference merely to their condition as idolaters, and is not to be extended to the whole of mankind; and when they are said to be" quickened," or made alive, this again is to be understood of their renunciation of the errors of heathenism, and their admission into the Christian Church.

This manner of expounding and applying the declarations and reasonings of Inspired Teachers robs them of their force and beauty, and reduces almost to a dead letter that Word which the Holy Spirit has pronounced quick and powerful, and which is designed to make the child of mortality wise to everlasting life. It invests these sacred compositions with little higher interest than what attaches to the classical writings of antiquity. The student of classical literature illustrates the statements or allusions of his favourite author by a reference to the manners, and customs, and history of the times in which he lived; and is it not to an exercise very similar to this that those expositors address themselves, when they view the epistolary writings of