the gates of heaven, and we refuse to give up our lusts that we may enter in? God forbid. God forbid. Let the love of Christ constrain us; let the affecting views we have taken of the grace of God, and the love of Christ, bow our souls to their most holy and blessed will. Let us desire nothing so much as deliverance from the power and pollution of sin; such deliverance on earth, is salvation begun, and is a comfortable foretaste and assurance of salvation, complete in glory.

SERMON II.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHOUT OBSERVATION.

LUKE 17. xx, xxi.

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

The kingdom of God, and kingdom of Heaven, are terms which often occur in the New Testament; the ultimate and highest meaning of which is, that state of purity and glory, to which the righteous are to be received after death. But their most common and current meaning in the Evangelists is the visible state of the church under the gospel, which prepares for the kingdom of glory. Now the Pharisees, who demanded of Christ when the kingdom of God should come, entertained very gross views of its nature. They expected a Messiah clad in blood-stained armour, surrounded by invincible armies, rapidly extending his conquests, till the Roman yoke should be broken from

the Jewish neck, and till his empire, identified with that of the Jews, should be extended from "sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.". Such was the kingdom they were looking for, and from which they hoped to derive great wealth and honours. Our Lord's reply to them was concise and direct, adapted to confound the babel of their ambitious hopes, and to illustrate the spiritual nature of his kingdom. As the subject has respect to some of the essential features of christianity, and as really concerns us, as it did the Pharisees who propounded the question of our text, let us direct our serious and awakened attention to a series of observations, which may serve to unfold it. I remark

I. In its original introduction into the world, the kingdom of God, or gospel dispensation, was without those splendid ensigns which attract worldly attention.

It was a state of things we have seen, widely different from the corrupt hopes of the Jews; widely different from the circumstances which commence the erection of an earthly kingdom. Such a kingdom comes with observation, and men may say Lo here! or Lo there! And we have seen the dreadful tragedy acted over and over again in our own day. A kingdom like this the Jews expected, and the Pharisees desired; and their Messiah coming to them without these ensigns, "they saw no beauty in him that they should desire him."

Glance an eye over his earthly course, and you see little to gratify, and much to offend a worldly ambition.

His birth was in a manger, and his reputed parents, though of royal descent, of humble circumstances, and residents in a despised city. He received baptism from one, "who, though the greatest among prophets, was not worthy to stoop down and unloose the latchet of his shoes." His select attendants were fishermen, publicans, and men unknown to the great, or despised by them. In life he had not where to lay his head; was persecuted from Judea to Galilee; his life sought in the city where he was brought up; and after a short course of public labors and sufferings, he was betrayed by one disciple and forsaken by all, condemned by Jews and Romans, and executed as a malefactor. This is as he appeared to the eyes of mere worldly men; and they regarded him, as the prophet predicted, "as a root growing out of a dry ground." Yet

To spiritual apprehension he appeared gloriously. They who are looking for earthly things only, seem to be under a veil, or their eyes to be holden that they cannot perceive things of a spiritual nature. Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not." This remark applies to events and circumstances in our Saviour's history. The coming of our Saviour was the fulfilment of ancient and well known prophecies, and his mission was confirmed by the most convincing evidence of miracles. But his kingdom was established in the heart. There was so little in all this to arrest the attention of the worldly Pharisees, that they inquired of Christ, when the kingdom of God should come. Yet some of the nations were impressed

by his miracles, and became the subjects of his spiritual kingdom; and to such he gave power to become the sons of God, even to those who believed in his name.. I remark

II. The laws of this kingdom were published in a mild and unostentatious manner. It was otherwise with the laws of Moses, although they were a divine dispensation. Nothing could exceed the dreadful majesty, with which the moral law was delivered from Sinai. "The mount was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the whole mount quaked greatly. When the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And Moses said, 1 exceedingly fear and quake." The gospel was introduced, and its laws announced, in a very different manner. They were addressed, not to the passions, but to the understandings and affections of men, in ordinary situations, in synagogues and the temple, in the house and in the field, from a ship to multitudes on the shore, and from a mountain to thousands reclining on the grass, below the divine speaker. "His doctrine dropped as the rain, and distilled as the dew, as the small rain on the herbs, and as the showers upon the grass." Sometimes he spake with an infant in his arms, saying, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Again, he took a little child, and set him in the midst of his audience saying, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." He sometimes accompanied his in