up as dust!" And without faith, where is our salvation?

These are awful reflections, and they should lead us to try ourselves, whether we be in the faith." Our text proclaims its mighty power over the soul. Do our consciences bear testimony to this? Do we find the mountain of sin removing? Are prayer and self-denial becoming habitual to us? And is the influence of Satan within us diminishing from day to day?

Then-but not till then-have we reason to rejoice; accounting ourselves "servants to God, having our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life."

X

306

SERMON XVIII.

THE CREATURE DELIVERED FROM THE

BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION.

ROMANS viii. 20, 21.

For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

There

THE scheme of the Almighty for the recovery of a lost world is, to a serious inquirer, replete with materials for wonder and gratitude. is a mysterious sublimity about it, which puts to flight the ordinary powers of reasoning, and soars above the puny efforts of the natural understanding. The mind must spring upward before

it can obtain any satisfactory view of the expanded glories of this magnificent subject. It must take an elevated stand above the little theatre of human thoughts and human passions; and, like an eagle enthroned upon a rock, and gazing at the sun, it must turn to the light of heaven, and seek that spiritual illumination, without which the doings of the Almighty are covered with a thick veil of incomprehensibility. To no purpose shall the natural man attempt to grapple with revealed truths. The Gentiles of St. Paul's time tried it; but the experiment was like the effort of an infant to grasp a ponderous ball, which presents no hold for its feeble hand, but which, if suddenly put in motion by an impulse from the opposite side, may recoil upon the impotent child, and crush it to pieces. To their depraved perception the wisdom of God appeared foolishness. They measured his stupendous proceedings by the dwarfish standard of their own attainments, and pronounced them folly, and the preachers of them fools. But the Omnipotent confounded their pretensions, and evinced his truth and glory by subjugating the proud spirits of thousands to the efficacy of his

own dispensation. Multitudes of presumptuous cavillers at the truth were seen to submit themselves, one after the other, to its convincing claims. The philosophy of the Gentile, and the perverseness of the Jew, gave way to its irresistible force. When nature had done its utmost, when ingenuity had reasoned, and sarcasm had jeered, and sophistry had misrepresented, and pride had lifted up her horn on high, then came the turning point for another operation to commence. The Spirit sank into the hearts of many of these railers, these scoffers, these misnamed sages of the world, and a revolution took place within them. They submitted to the overpowering dominion of truth, as it is unfolded in the Gospel. They no longer amused themselves by weaving fables respecting the origin and end of man, but they read the Creator's own account of his creature. They found in the written word of God that information concerning themselves, which they had been struggling to acquire in vain, by the light of their own sagacity. And they discovered that there was a wisdom from above, which, when let into the mind, exalts, purifies, and enlarges the human understanding;

so that it sees, judges, and decides, according to a standard newly given, and rejoices in its augmented faculties, looking back with contempt on the dark and contracted sphere in which it before moved. And I appeal to every man, who from a state of indifference, or ignorance, or infidelity, has been brought to a saving knowledge of the truths of Christianity, whether he has not experienced this contrast of feeling, between what he is, and what he was-whether vital Christianity is not a thing of experimental light and life, and the absence of vital Christianity a retrospective state of gloom, and confinement, and death. All who have been taught of the Spirit are as fully convinced of this, as they are of the existence of the air they breathe, or of the light by which they discern the countenances of each other.

St. Paul was in a peculiar manner gifted with this comprehension of divine things. He moved in a sphere of heavenly light. Earth lay beneath him like a scathed and darkened orb. All its petty concerns had long ceased to give him interest. A group of sublimer thoughts had taken full possession of his mind: -the fall of man, the havoc of sin, the glories of the re