site natures in Christ, has had no small influence in countenancing those irrational ecstacies and absurd, if not impious raptures, which so often flow from the lips of enthusiasts. Add to this, their overwhelming views of sin, which are founded not always so much in wicked purposes indulged, as in certain disordered fancies of a natural alienation from God, and enmity to his go. vernment, and that very worst contradiction of all common sense and common sensibility,-of a natural hatred of all his moral perfections, and their belief too that there is no mercy, no residue of the spirit to pardon and restore them,-and why should we wonder, that, with phrenzied delight, they throw themselves into the arms of a compassionate Saviour, and exhaust their vocabulary of terms to express their joy, and hope, and longing desires; and that under this false and unnatural excitement, they sometimes forget all that is reverent and becoming towards the author of salvation. Far be it from me to provoke any thing like ridicule against any sincere christians, who have passed through trials like these, and have not sunk under the weight of their awful convictions of guilt, which consists, perhaps, in nothing more than the common infirmities of human nature. But it is deplorable, (and it is no fiction, for such cases have been witnessed) to see an amiable fellow being who has caught a contagion like this, and having neither strength of mind nor vigour of constitution to bear up under this factitious but oppressive burden, is racked by tortures, which hurry him off in a phrenzy of delirium, or bear him down by their constant pressure to the depths of despair; and there, lingering through the slow gradations of uninterrupted and increasing melancholy, he is at last delivered from the depths of wo only by the kind messenger of death.

It belongs to all who profess and call themselves christians, while they avoid whatever seems unbecoming in the mode of shewing their love to Christ, to use their best endeavours to fall behind none in the sincerity of their affection. It is certain we shall not be such as he would have us to be, if we do not bring into exercise our best efforts to acquire and cherish that temper of love, which will become a habit, only by the constancy with which it is maintained. The christian's life is called a warfare; but it is now a warfare, not so much against external enemies, as against our own passions and prejudices. If these are kept in check, all the auxiliary foes, which are nothing more than the various temptations which would keep us in bondage to the world, are disarmed of all their power. Encouragement to active goodness is every where given us, as well by the example of Christ, as by the hopes and promises of that religion which he

revealed. The favour of God is withheld from none, who do not abandon themselves; and, after sincere faith which cannot fail to be an operative principle, all virtue seems to consist in acting up to the spirit of that exalted being whom we acknowledge for our teacher and by whom we hope to be saved. While therefore we should guard against that sloth, which would make us satisfied with small advances in the christian life, and would prompt us to ascribe our deficiencies and sins to the imperfection of human nature, we must not, on the contrary, too readily despair under the pressure of trials, remembering that we have a high-priest who was tried like ourselves, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

WORTH OF THE UNDISPUTED TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.

IN the multitude of doctrines which Christians profess to derive from their religion, there are a few which enter into the composition of every system of opinion and faith. They are those which teach the existence, providence and moral government of a perfect Being, and the certainty of a future life. Although these truths are common to every set of religious opinions, they are by no means valued alike by every religious denomination. By the great body of christians they are hard allowed to belong in a peculiar manner to revelation. They are not perhaps positively disowned as coming from that source, but as christian truths they certainly receive no due regard from the minds of those, who, divided into distinct and opposing sects, fasten all their attention upon those points and opinions which constitute the respective differences of religious faith. To value them aright, to estimate the importance of a revelation of God's moral character and man's future existence, requires a severe effort of mind, even from those who believe these truths to be the essential truths of christianity. For to have any thing like a just conception of their immense value, we must bring ourselves to comprchend fully what must have been the state of men's minds without the knowledge of them. But, as habitual believers in Revelation, we have become so accustomed to look upon the present state of things in reference to, and as inseparably connected with a future state, that we forget how entirely and exclusively this future state is a matter of revelation. It is the delightful employment of religious feeling to consider all the appearances of nature as intimating those glorious and benevolent designs which the gospel has disclosed. The first common

truths of revelation are connected with the objects around us by a thousand beautiful and affecting analogies. We stand among the works of God and listen to the echo which they give to the voice of his Son, until, as it grows louder and louder to our ears, we mistake it for a distinct, independent utterance. We are thus led to consider the certainly very equivocal intimations of natural religion as striking and decisive declarations, which must always have been as evident, as well to those who have lived without a revelation as to us; and we entirely lose sight of the fact that peculiar light and assistance are now enjoyed. And further. The truths to which we refer are so simple, they are stated so clearly and explicitly, they have so burst forth in the bare act of being revealed-the knowledge of them has become so diffused like light through our minds and throughout the community, that they have partaken of the nature of the commonest blessings of a birthright, and we find it very difficult to conceive the state of a mind to which they are unknown. How must these difficulties in the way of acquiring a proper sense of the value of the simple truths respecting God and the immortality of man, as revealed truths, be increased in the case of those who have been brought to believe that certain other points are of paramount importance-to consider, for instance, the doctrine of three persons or distinctions in the Deity, as of far higher value than the revelation of God as the Father of his creaturesto esteem the belief that the happiness of a future life depends upon some kind of treaty or contract between these divine persons, to be far more important than the conviction that every one will be judged according to his works; and who, in short have accustomed their minds to the reception of doctrines, which, if supposed to be true, at once destroy the value of revelation, and almost make it a question whether the uncertainty of heathen darkness be not preferable.

Although it be thus difficult rightly to estimate the value and importance of the doctrines of our immortality and responsibleness as doctrines of revelation, yet the obstacles in our way are not too great to be overcome. It requires indeed a strong mental exertion to tear ourselves away from all our present associations and stand in the situation of those who were without God and without hope in the world. But such an exertion will be successful. Its result will be to make even those who are disposed to consider the merest points of speculation and faith as of the highest importance, even such acknowledge, that although christianity do nothing more than make us acquainted with God and a future life, it is still of indescribable value, and it will not be left to be conceived that there are any other truths more worthy our heartiest acceptation.

Let us shut out for a moment the light of revelation. We shall then see if the objects in the midst of which we stand are of themselves luminous with those truths which it is most necessary for man to know. Can we of ourselves, without the assistance of our religion, learn the certainty of another life and the government of one perfect and Supreme Being?

The state of things in which we are placed is great and glorious. But in all its greatness and glory, it is subject to a continual and wide decay. Every thing grows old and vanishes. Our own species are exposed to the one great evil. Individual after individual, family after family, generation after generation disappear from the face of the earth, to be known no more forever. There is nothing which revolts at this universal sentence of death, but the secret desires of the human soul after a continued existence. But we know not whether these aspirations be any thing more than what must spring from that love of life necessary to our present being. And although we might at times, by our repeated contemplations, feel the intellectual principle within to be too noble, too exalted, too opposite to the dull inertness of material objects, to share a similar fate, yet all these feelings would be put to flight on the first near instance of our mortality, when we should see our most intimate and respected friend fall at our side, beneath the blow of the universal destroyer, see all life and expression fade away from the countenance with which we had identified so much intellectual power, and the frame in which had dwelt the fulness of some mental faculty stop all its movements like those of a machine. Our most confident hopes could not stand before such near and appalling proofs of the total destruction of man.

And as it regards the providence of one God perfectly wise and good-how much should we know without the aid of Revelation? With this aid, we have become acquainted with the grand argument arising from the uniformity of design manifest throughout creation. Without it, we are in a world in which indeed the marks of one great and wise design are numerous, and we might probably be disposed to acknowledge the existence of one wise and powerful God, were it not that the evils to which we are constantly exposed, the pain and suffering of our condition, were it not that these, heavy and frequent, oppose themselves to that one great truth. Sorrow and suffering come close to us-into our hearts, and the feelings they produce obviate the conclusions of the understanding. It is hardly to be supposed but that we should feel that dark and malignant influences were mingled with the providence over human things.

But how has been the fact? To our reasonable suppositions

of what man would be without some express revelation, the past fully testifies by showing us what he was. Unassisted reason has been confessedly unable to drive away the uncertainty that brooded over human condition. Men found themselves in a world full of the effects of some stupendous cause, not the decaying monuments of a departed power, but the instruments of some ever present but invisible energies. Every object became to them instinct with divinity, until, overcome by fear and superstition, they seemed to themselves to be in a vast assembly of gods; gods, whom they feared for their power, but who in every thing else, in their moral natures, were of like infirmity with themselves. How thoroughly debasing must have been those religions, whose support was fear, and the objects of which were beings superior to man in power and presenting in their characters the blackest deformities of human passion! Such religions did exist every where before the coming of God's messenger. While the imaginations of the ignorant consigned each thing in nature to the guardianship of a peculiar spirit, the existence of two ruling principles, good and evil, has been one of the last conclusions of philosophy. The enlightened, the more reflecting among the ancients encouraged the religion of the multitude. They regarded not the character of the popular superstitions so long as they furnished sanctions to civil government. In their own minds they gave up gods and men to the current of fate; or the superior being in whom they might believe, was of too elevated a nature to notice the imperfections and changes of this world. The common notion of a future state as a part of the prevailing religious systems was likewise encouraged. It is not to be denied that such a notion every where existed. The popular conceptions of a future state of existence were however sufficiently low and debasing in their nature to make a clearer discovery in the highest degree necessary. Still it is doubtful whether among the majority there did exist any firm and settled belief on this point. Whatever might have been their hopes and wishes, there was death before them, death in all its darkness and corruption. Take them at those seasons when a belief in a God and a future life must have been of inestimable value and when the strength of it may be tried. Enter the domestic circle just broken by death, but the light of hope and consolation is not there. There is a letter of Pliny's giving an account of the sudden death of the daughter of a friend. There are in it the expressions of the deepest sorrow, but not the slightest allusion to those invaluable consolations which a belief in another existence would have afforded. There is also a striking passage which shows the weakness of even the popular belief in a divine providence and a fu