have this power; but that man has it, is equally the teaching of the Scriptures and the dictate of experience. In childhood, in youth, in manhood, in old age; busied with the anxious cares of life, or in pursuit of the bubble reputation; in health and in sickness; yea, upon the panting bed of death, and even down to the moment when the quivering spirit wings her flight to the judgment-seat of Christ, man has the power to resist the Holy Ghost; and -does resist him.

(3.) Yet others, and among them the great majority of those who are in the habit of attending upon the public worship of God, partially yield to the strivings of the Spirit. They lay down some of the weapons of their rebellion. They would give him their hearts, if it were possible, piecemeal. When they say to the Holy Ghost, "Go thy way," they are careful to add, "for this time." They have no intention of so fighting against him as to induce his final flight. They halt and hesitate. They weep over their sins to-day; and to-morrow they will repent and give their hearts to God. In heaven's register are their ten thousand vows of amendment and reformation recorded, and against each is written-broken. For years, ministering spirits have been about thy path, sinner, wondering at the unwearied efforts of Him who standeth at the door and knocks; still are they waiting for the signal which shall warrant the tuning of celestial harps for joy at thy repentance. How this conduct appears to thyself I know not. To them who view it by the same light in which God sees it, beyond a doubt it is wondrously strange,-unfathomably mysterious.

II. But this subject of angelic study is INFINITELY GLORIOUS. The fact declared in the text is ample proof of this position. Into the wonders of nature, the mysteries of Providence, the revolution of the planets, the creation of new, or the destruction of old worlds, it is not said they desire to look. Possibly all these things engage a share of their attention; for, like ourselves, they are finite, and grow in wisdom and increase in knowledge. But in the sufferings of Christ and man's salvation; in the plan of human redemption, devised by infinite wisdom and executed by infinite love, they find a subject of study infinitely glorious.

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First, in its exhibition of the divine character. It recalls, and continually shows forth, an attribute of the great Supreme, with which the universe had been otherwise unacquainted. Their own existence attests his goodness; every successive moment of unalloyed and increasing bliss heightens that grateful feeling, which prompts the exclamation, O taste and see that the Lord is good! They knew his power also. They were with him when he stretched the north over the empty place, and hung the earth upon nothing. They heard that voice which said, "Let there be light; and there was light; and they shouted for joy when the morning stars first sang together, and the Creator's last day's work was done." They knew him also as a God of justice, taking vengeance upon the guilty. They had seen their associates, who had revolted from their allegiance, hurled headlong into hell; and the smoke of their torment excites, amid the celestial ranks, the exclamation, "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?" But never, until the fulfillment of the declaration, "Lo, I come to do thy will!" never, until the claims of a broken law were satisfied, and Christ had drained the dregs of the bitter cup, and ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, knew they the mercy of Him who hateth iniquity, and who cannot look on sin. Here they see his compassion, and his readiness to forgive. Here is found an answer to the otherwise eternally unsolved problem, "How can God be just, and justify the ungodly?" It is an infinitely glorious study therefore, because in it is seen, and will be seen for ever, the fulfillment of the prophet's declaration, "Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other."

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2. The transforming efficacy of the plan of redemption indicates its glory. It is a glorious study to trace its effects upon nations; and well may angels desire to look into the progress of a people from savage barbarism to civilized refinement; from lust, and rapine, and blood, to a pure and spiritual devotion; and to the triumphing and the abounding everywhere of the fruits of the Spirit. Utterly vain have been attempts to civilize, independently of the preaching of salvation by the sufferings of Christ. Send them the gospel first; and then, when the prophet's ques

tion, "Hath a nation changed their gods?" is answered in the affirmative, the blessings of civilization and refinement follow in her train. An uncivilized Christian nation is an unheard-of anomaly; and in the progress of God's scheme for saving our world, angels see, as man might see, did he not shut his eyes, that the time is coming when this earth shall be filled with the glory of God; and that every trophy of the sufferings of Christ, every sinner saved by the preaching of the gospel, is at once a seal attesting the truth of the prediction, and an agent to bring about its fulfillment. In the individual convert himself is seen the wondrous transforming efficacy of the plan of salvation. The tiger is changed into the lamb; the blood-thirsty persecutor into the apostolic martyr; a child of wrath, an heir of hell, becomes a son of God; a fellow-citizen of the saints, an equal with angels, (Luke xx, 36,) a co-heir with Christ himself. This leads to the remark that,

3. Its diffusive nature renders God's method of saving sinners a suitable subject for angelic study. Once they were sent on an embassy to announce his birth, and to make the first proclamation of Heaven's good-will to man. Even yet, as they shall continue to be, until commissioned to reap and gather in the harvest, are they ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. But they have no agency in diffusing the blessings of the gospel. It is left to itself. Man, redeem

ed and regenerated, is to tell the story. It is itself the leaven that is to leaven the whole lump. True, as before remarked, independently of the Holy Spirit's aid, even the preaching of the gospel is a vain thing, and without him, learning and eloquence can do nothing; yet is it equally true, that every disciple who pleases may have that Spirit's influence; and the first prompting of every converted sinner's heart is to glorify God, by proclaiming how great things he hath done; and by inviting others to participate in the same blessedness. Under a great mistake, indeed, are multitudes of professing Christians, when they imagine their own individual happiness was the first or chief object of the Almighty in their conversion. That they might be happy! Were that all, he might at once, and he would, have translated them away from this region of temptation and trial, to that rest which remaineth for

the people of God. No; his first great object was the advancement of his own glory, by adding another to the army by whom a world is to be brought into allegiance to its Maker and its Saviour. That this is true, is seen in the fact that Christians are happy here just in proportion as they continue to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Let them, as is, alas! the case with too many, let them wrap themselves in selfishness, and sit down, exclaiming, I have passed from death unto life, and now I'll be happy; and soon will the light that is in them become darkness. Not into the history or the conduct of such professors do angels desire to look; but into the results of that glorious copartnership, into which the Almighty, passing by the first-born sons of light, has taken the converted sinner, and enabled him, with all his redeemed brethren of the race, to exclaim, "We are laborers together with God!"

4. The glory of this study is seen further in the freeness with which the blessings of this salvation are offered to the children of men.

(1.) To all indiscriminately. It stops not to inquire into the degree of the sinner's guilt, or the extent of his iniquity. As the Saviour, when on earth he healed the lepers, unstopped the ears of the deaf, and on the sightless eyeball poured the day, asked no questions as to the virulence or the duration of the malady; so, salvation by the sufferings of Christ is offered not only to the moralist, and the good citizen, but to the profligate and the abandoned; to every wretched outcast on this side of the caverns of damnation. And this

(2.) In perfect sincerity. O what a diminution of its glory, if the doctrine had ever reached heaven, and were believed there, that the sufferings of Christ were designed for but a portion of the race, and that its blessings were limited to a few! Or worse still, if upon angelic ears had fallen that modification of the doctrine, which could not have failed to impress on angelic hearts a doubt of God's sincerity-Offered to all, but intended for a few!

(3.) On terms easy, and within the reach of every individual. Is it asked, Why has faith been made the condition of this salvation? The answer is-How could anything else have been made that condition? For, admitting that

some other plan had been devised, it had been essentially necessary to believe in the efficacy of that plan before the sinner could have reaped from it any benefit. Hence it is morally impossible that salvation could have been offered on any other terms, than either faith alone, or faith and something else. God chose the former; and while therein is revealed the brightest glimpse that finite creatures can have of the riches of his goodness and his glory, man is taught, that not for his violations of the moral law he perishes, but for refusing to believe. An atonement has been made for actual transgression, and "he,” and he only, "who believeth not, shall be damned." But further,

5. The perpetuity and the fullness of the blessings of this salvation evince its glory, and render it a study worthy of angelic minds. A glorious mystery is couched in that description of Him by whose sufferings this salvation was effected, when he is styled "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world!" In "looking into these things," they gaze not merely upon Gethsemane and Calvary. They date not the commencement of this glory from what we call the fullness of time. They go back beyond the father of the faithful, who rejoiced to see "his day." They beheld the slaughtered Lamb in the typical sacrifices of righteous Abel; they heard of Christ in the enigmatical promise to our first parents. Reaching back to the original transgression, and extending in its efficacious fullness onward to the end of time, they desire to look into that fountain still unexhausted, and for ever inexhaustible, in which a world may wash away its stains-all its stainsfor it cleanses "from all unrighteousness." Crimson and scarlet become like wool and snow. Even on this doomed earth, surrounded by iniquity, and exposed, now to the roaring of him who goeth about seeking whom he may devour, and now to the allurements of an apparent angel of light, a feeble worm of the dust is seen by these heavenly students able to "do all things," and 66 more than conqueror." It may be fairly questioned whether, in all the universe of God, is to be seen a more glorious spectacle than angels gaze upon, when, in this tainted atmospheretempted but triumphant-they mark the perfect man and behold the upright.

Nor does even this indicate the extent of the glory of