looking at your own religious exercises-your fervency, and enlarged heart in prayer, or in the house of God; or you are looking at the work of the Holy Spirit in you-the graces of the spirit. Alas! alas! The bed is shorter than that you can stretch yourself on it-the covering is narrower than that you can wrap yourself in it. Despair of pardon in that way. Give it up for ever. Your heart is desperately wicked. Every righteousness in which your heart has anything to do is vile and polluted, and cannot appear in his sight. Count it all loss, filthy rags, dung, that you may win Christ.

2. Betake yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ.-Believe the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. He delighteth in mercy; he is ready to forgive; in him compassions flow; he justifies the ungodly. Have you seen the glory of the cross of Jesus? Has it attracted your heart? Do you feel unspeakably pleased with that way of salvation? Do you see that God is glorified when you are saved? that God is a God of majesty, truth, unsullied holiness, and inflexible justice, and yet you are justified? Does the cross of Christ fill your heart? Does it make a great calm in your soul—a heavenly rest? love that word" the righteousness of God," "the righteousness which is by faith," the righteousness without works? Do you sit within sight of the cross? Does your soul rest there?

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3. Glory only in the Cross of Christ.-Observe, there cannot be a secret Christian. Grace is like ointment hid in the hand, it bewrayeth itself. A lively Christain cannot keep silence. If you truly feel the sweetness of the Cross of Christ, you will be constrained to confess Christ before men. like the best wine, that goeth down sweetly, causing lips to speak." Do you confess him in your family? Do you make it known there, that you are Christ's? Remember, you must be decided in your own house. It is the mark of a hypocrite to be a Christian every where except at home. Among your companions, do you own him a friend whom you have found? In the shop and in the market, are you willing to be known as a man washed in the blood of the lamb? Do you long that all your dealings be under the sweet rules of the gospel? Come then to the Lord's Table and confess him that has saved your soul. Oh! grant that it may be a true, free, and full confession. This is my sweet food, my lamb, my righteousness, my Lord and my God, my all in all. "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross." Once you gloried in riches, friends, fame, sin; now in a crucified Jesus.

III. The effects.-" The world is crucified to me, and I unto the world."—"If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature," &c. When the blind beggar of Jericho got his eyes opened by the Lord, this world was all changed to him, and he to the world. So it was with Paul; no sooner did he rise from his knees, with the peace of Jesus in his heart, than the world got its death-blow in his eyes. As he hurried over the smooth stones of the streets of Damascus, or looked down from the flat roof of his house upon the lovely gardens on the banks of the Abana, the world and all its dazzling show seemed to his eye a poor, shrivelled, crucified thing. Once it was his all. Once its soft and slippery flatteries were pleasant as music to his ear. Riches, beauty, pleasure, all that the natural eye admires, his heart was once set upon; but the moment he believed on Jesus all these began to die. True, they were not dead, but they were nailed to a cross. They no more had that living attraction for them they once had; and now every day they began to lose their power. As a dying man on the cross grows weaker and weaker every moment, while his heart's blood trickles from the deep gashes in his hands and feet, so the world, that was once his all, began to lose every moment its attractive power. He tasted so much sweetness in Christ, in pardon, access to God, the smile of God, the indwelling spirit, that the world became every day a more tasteless world to him.

Another effect was, "I to the world."-As Paul laid his hand upon his own bosom he felt that it also was changed. Once it was as a mettled race-horse that paces the ground and cannot be bridled in-once it was like the fox-hounds on the scent impatient of the leash-his heart thus rushed after fame, honour, worldly praise; but now it was nailed to the cross, a broken, contrite heart. True, it was not dead. Many a fitful start his old nature gave that drove him to his knees and made him cry for grace to help; but still, the more he looked to the cross of Jesus, the more his old heart began to die. Every day he felt less desire for sin-more desire for Christ, and God, and perfect holiness.

Some may discover that they have never come to Christ. Has the world been crucified to you? Once it was your all -its praise, its riches, its songs, and merry-makings? Has it been nailed to the cross in your sight? Oh! put your hand on your heart. Has it lost its burning desire after earthly things? They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. Do you feel that Jesus has

put the nails through your lusts? Do you wish they were dead? What answer can you make, sons and daughters of pleasure, to whom the dance, and song, and the glass, and witty repartee, are the sum of happiness? Ye are none of Christ's. What answer can you make, lovers of money, sordid money-makers, who had rather have a few more sovereigns than the grace of God in your heart? What answer can you make, flesh-pleasers, night-walkers, lovers of darkness? Ye are not Christ's. Ye have not come to Christ. The world

is all alive to you, and you are living to the world. You cannot glory in the cross, and love the world. Ah! poor deluded souls, you have never seen the glory of the way of pardon by Jesus. Go on; love the world; grasp every pleasure; gather heaps of money; feed and fatten on your lusts; take your fill. What will it profit you when you lose your own soul? Some are saying, O that the world was crucified to me and I to the world! O that my heart were as dead as a stone to the world, and alive to Jesus! Do you truly wish it? Look, then, to the cross. Behold the amazing gift of love. Salvation is promised to a look. Sit down, like Mary, and gaze upon a crucified Jesus. So will the world become a dim and dying thing. When you gaze upon the sun, it makes every thing else dark; when you taste honey, it makes every thing else tasteless; so when your soul feeds on Jesus, it takes away the sweetness of all earthly things-praise, pleasure, fleshly lusts, all lose their sweetness. Keep a continued gaze. Run, looking unto Jesus. Look, till the way of salvation by Jesus fills up the whole horizon, so glorious and peace-speakSo will the world be crucified to you, and you unto the

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world.

SERMON XIV.

"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thou sands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul! He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?-MICAH vi. 6-8.

Doctrine. The good way of coming before the Lord.

The question of an awakened soul.- -"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord ?" An unawakened man never puts that question. A natural man has no desire to come before God, or to bow himself before the high God. He does not like to

think of God. He would rather think of any other subject. He easily forgets what he is told about God. A natural man has no memory for divine things, because he has no heart for them. He has no desire to come before God in prayer. There is nothing a natural man hates more than prayer. He would far rather spend half an hour every morning in bodily exercise or in hard labour, than in the presence of God. He has no desire to come before God when he dies. He knows that he must appear before God, but it gives him no joy. He had rather sink into nothing; he had rather never see the face of God. Ah! my friends, is this your condition? How surely you may know that you have "the carnal mind which is enmity against God." You are like Pharoah—" Who is the Lord that I should obey him?" You say to God, "Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways." What an awful state it is to be in to have no desire after him who is the fountain of living waters!

I. Here is the piercing question of every awakened soul. 1. An awakened soul feels that his chief happiness is in coming before God. This was unfallen Adam's happiness. He felt like a child under a loving father's eye. It was his chief joy to come before God—to be loved by him—to be like a mote in the sunbeam-to be continually basked in the sunshine of his love, no cloud or veil coming between. This is the joy of holy angels, to come before the Lord, and bow before the high God. In his presence is fulness of joy. "The angels do always behold the face of my Father." On whatever errand of love they fly, they still feel that his eye of love is on them—this is their daily, hourly joy. This is the true happiness of a believer. Hear David (Psalm xlii.), "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God: my soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God." He panted not after the gifts of God-not his favours or comfortsbut after himself. A believer longs after God-to come into his presence to feel his love to feel near to him in secret -to feel in the crowd that he is nearer than all the creatures. Ah! dear brethren, have you ever tasted this blessedness? There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of God for one hour than in an eternity of the presence of To be in his presence-under his love-under his eye -is heaven wherever it be. God can make you happy in any eircumstances. Without him nothing can.

man.

2. An awakened soul feels difficulties in the way.-"Wherewith," &c. There are two great difficulties.

1st, The nature of the sinner.-" Wherewith shall I," &c. When God really awakens a soul, he shows the vileness and hatefulness of himself. He directs the eye within. He shews him that every imagination of his heart has been only evil continually; that every member of his body he has used in the service of sin; that he has treated Christ in a shameful manner; that he has sinned both against law and love; that he has kept the door of his heart barred against the Lord Jesus, till his head was filled with dew, and his locks with the drops of the night. O brethren, if God has ever discovered yourself to you, you would wonder that such a lump of hell and sin should have been permitted to live and breathe so long; that God should have had patience with you till this day. Your cry will be, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord ?" Though all the world should come before him, how can I?

2d, The nature of God." The high God." When God really awakens a soul, he generally reveals to him something of his own holiness and majesty. Thus he dealt with Isaiah (vi.), “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim; one cried to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is filled with his glory. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone." When Isaiah saw that God was so great a God, and so holy, he felt himself undone. He felt that he could not stand in the presence of so great a God. O brethren! have you ever had a discovery of the highness and holiness of God, so as to lay you low at his feet? pray for such a discovery of God as Job had, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Alas! I fear that most of you will never know that God with whom you have to do, till you stand guilty and speechless before his great white throne. O that you would pray for discovery of him now, that you may cry, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God!"

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3d, The anxiety of the awakened soul leads to the question -" Wherewith ?"—Ah! it is a piercing question. It is the question of one who has been made to feel that "one thing is needful." Anything he has he would give up to get peace with God. If he had a thousand rams, or ten thousands rivers of