announces from the mouth of God himself The terms on which we may be reconciled, it discloses with exact precision and perfect clearness; so that he who runs may read ; so that beggars and children may understand and accept them. Faith in the Redeemer, repentance towards God, and holiness of character involve them all. They are terms, reasonable in themselves, easy to us, and productive of incomprehensible good to all who embrace them. To overcome the stubbornness of our hearts, Christ has commissioned the SPIRIT OF GRACE to sanctify us for himself; to draw us with the cords of his love; to guide us with his wisdom; to uphold us with his power; and to conduct us under his kind providence to the heavens. In this scheme is contained all that we need, and all that we can rationally desire. The way of salvation is here become a highway, and way-faring men, though fools, need not err therein.

. The religion of the Gospel is a religion designed for sinners. By the expiation of Christ it opens the brazen door, which was forever barred against their return. Here the supreme, and otherwise immoveable, obstacle to the ассерtance of sinners is taken away. If sinners were to be accepted, it was not possible that this cup should pass from Christ. The next great obstacle in the way of their acceptance is found in their unholy, disobedient hearts, propense to evil only, and continually; and the next, their perpetual exposure to backsliding, and to falling finally away. These obstacles, immoveable also, by any means on this side of heaven, the spirit of grace by his most merciful interference in our behalf entirely removes. Man, therefore, in the Gospel finds his return from apostasy made possible, made easy, made certain, actually begun; steadily carried on in the present world, and finally completed in the world to come.

But no other scheme of religion presents to us even plausible means of removing these difficulties. Natural religion to which infidels persuade us to betake ourselves for safety, does not even promise us a return to God. Natural religion is the religion of law; of that law which in the only legal language declares to us, "Do these things, and thou shalt live; but the soul that sinneth shall die." These things, the things specified in the requisitions of the law, we have not done, and therefore cannot live. We have sinned, and therefore must die. It has been formerly shown, that the law

knows no condition of acceptance, or justification, but obedience. Concerning repentance, faith, forgiveness, and reconciliation, concerning the sinner's return to God, and his admission to immortal life, the law is silent. Its only sentence, pronounced on those who disobey, is a sentence of final condemnation.

Whatever we may suppose the law to be, we have disobeyed its precepts. Nothing has been ever devised or received by man as a law of God, which all men have not disobeyed. Infidels cannot devise such a law as they will dare to call a law of God, and publish to men under this title, which they themselves, and all other men have not often disobeyed. From the very nature of law, a nature insepa rable from its existence as a law, disobedience to its precepts must be condemned; and, if nothing interfere to preserve the offender from punishment, he must of necessity suffer. To what degree, in what modes, through what extent, these sufferings will reach, the infidel cannot conjecture. To this anguish no end appears. Of such an end no arguments can be furnished by his mind; no tidings have reached his ear, and no hopes can rationally arise in his heart. Death, with all the gloomy scenes attendant upon a dying-bed, is to him merely the commencement of doubt, fear, and sorrow. The grave, to him, is the entrance into a world of absolute and eternal darkness. That world, hung round with fear, amazement, and despair, overcast with midnight, melancholy with solitude, desolate of every hope of real good, opens to him through the dreary passage of the grave. Beyond this entrance he sees nothing, he knows nothing, he can conjecture nothing, but what must fill his heart with alarm, and make his death-bed a couch of thorns. With a suspense, scarcely less terrible than the miseries of damnation itself, his soul lingers over the vast and desolate abyss; when, compelled by an unseen and irresistable hand, it plunges into this uncertain and irreversible doom, to learn by experience what is the measure of woe destined to reward those "who obey not God," and reject the salvation proffered by his Son.

In such a situation, what man, not yet lost to sense and thought, not yet convinced that he has committed the sin which cannot be forgiven, would not hail with transport the dawn of the gospel the clear rising of the Sun of Righteous

ness, to illumine his path through this melancholy world. to dispel the darkness of the grave, to shed a benevolent light upon the entrance into eternity, and brighten his passage to the heavens.

OBJECTION has been made against the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ; as not serving any moral purpose, or promoting amendment of life. If this objection were well founded, it would form a stronger argument against the doctrine, than any other that has been made. If there be no moral obligation contained in a doctrine, professing to be a doctrine of religion, that doctrine is not true; it is not to be ranked, in the number of Scriptural doctrines. They are all doctrines, according to godliness, all doctrines to be obeyed; all such as teach to deny ungodliness, and wordly lusts; and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in the world. One grand design of the whole of Divine Revelation, is to conform man to the moral image of God, which by transgression he has lost.

A first principle in religion, is the belief of a God. He that cometh unto God, must believe that he is,—cometh to him in worship, to communion with him in this life, or in heaven. Knowledge, is an essential ingredient in faith; we cannot believe any thing, as to the fact or thing to be believed; of which in all respects, we are wholly ignorant. No faith is genuine, that is not accompanied with holiness of life. "I will show thee my faith by my works." It is necessary, then, that we should know the God, in whom we believe, who Jesus Christ is, in whom we are commanded to believe. If we have not just conceptions of him, our faith will be erroneous; and if mistaken, our practice will be proportionally defective.

The chief means of being transformed into the Divine image, that is, into the moral image of God, is beholding the glory of the Lord. "But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord." We can behold the glory of the Lord, no way but by faith; but we cannot act faith, upon the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, if we know not what glory really belongs to him: and if we have not faith in him, we will not be conformed to his moral image.

'The condescension of Christ is produced in Scripture, as a powerful argument, to promote humility. But if he was only a mere man, or a creature however exalted, and not God, the great weight of the motive to humbleness of mind is lost. The Apostle's reasoning is,-Christ being in the form of God, and yet becoming man, and a servant therefore, let the same mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

If the Father and Son be one in substance, and one in council and union, in fulfilling the great work of man's redemption, how should such consideration excite us to union and communion in principle, in council, in affection in all moral conduct. Such lesson, seems to be taught by Christ himself, when he prays that all who believe may be one, as, says he, thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfect in one.

Some judge it to be a matter of small moment, whether we believe Jesus Christ to be a Divine person, or not. If he be a mere man, no one can rationally or devoutly account it a matter of little moment, whether men change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and worship the creature instead of the Creator. Nor can any man reckon it a trifle, if Jesus be the true God, whether he withhold that blessing, and honour, and glory, and power which are due to him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

It seems difficult to conceive that any man should read the Scriptures candidly and attentively, without being convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity, is essential to, and implied in every part of the system of revealed truth. But the doctrine is never stated by itself in the Scriptures in an abstract way, that is, disconnected from a holy life. It is invariably made subservient to the manifestation of the moral character of God. The doctrine of God's combined justice and mercy in the redemption of sinners, and of his continued spiritual watchfulness over the progress of truth through the world, could not have been communicated without the doctrine of the Trinity, so as to have been distinctly and vividly apprehended. But it is never mentioned except in connection with the subject of redemption, never except to

delineate the moral character of God; nor is it ever taught as a separate, exclusive, or abstract subject of belief. It is never given as a fact merely of a strange and unintelligible nature; but it stands indissolubly united with some act of Divine holiness and compassion, which radiates to the heart an appeal of tenderness most intelligible in its nature and object, and most constraining in its influence.

The abstract fact that there is a plurality in the unity of the Godhead, is admitted to make little or no address to our understandings, or our feelings, or our consciences : but this is not the way in which the important truth is revealed. It comes to us in this form,-" God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believ. eth on him, might not perish, but have everlasting life:but the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things." Now by this mode of stating the subject our metaphysical ignorance of the divine essence is not removed, but our moral ignorance is enlightened; and that is the thing with which we have to do. The Scriptures give no metaphysical definition of the Divine essence; but they contain a reve dation of moral knowledge for the purpose of producing a moral effect upon our characters.

That there is sin in the world is universally admitted; its guilt and its desert are intimated by the voice of conscience in the breast of every man, and they are plainly exhibited in the moral character of God, and in the management of Providence in rewarding virtue and punishing vice. But to show men the dreadful evil of sin, the punishment inseparably connected with it, and to induce them to hate and forsake it, a stronger argument is addressed to the under standings and feelings of men than any suggestions of conscience or external procedure of Providence could furnish. God himself gives a most striking demonstration of the evil of sin in submitting to its penalty. God was manifest in the flesh to destroy the devil. "Forasmuch as the children were made partakers of flesh and blood; He also himself took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death," "he gave himself to redeem from all iniquity." He who is God over all blessed for ever bore our sins in his own body on the tree,

Now is there no argument to holiness contained in the