polished and intelligent, the friends of morality, and the friends of man, to the utmost limit that their principles can carry them. Were we to remonstrate with such a one, it might be asked, Why should you be content with so distant and loose a view of that which is confessed to be of so immense importance? Why will you not bestow a thorough investigation on this great subject, since you admit its importance, and have it before you in such minuteness of statement and urgency of appeal? Why should you insist on it, that the religion of Jesus, searching and spiritual although its commandment be, is inaccessible to man, or incompatible with his nature, since it appears so clearly, from man's living history, to be the disease of his nature, and not his nature itself, which creates the whole of the difficulty? Why allow this religion to do no more than smooth the rugged exterior of society, or strengthen a few of the coarser virtues, since the existing monuments of its efficacy evince its power to renovate the entire mass from its surface down to the very core? Why, in short, regard it as a thing of time, if there be so much as a peradventure that it reaches forth to eternity itself? The advocates of Christianity may err, their zeal or indiscretion may hurry them into extravagance, but you have the thing itself pure and entire in the oracles of its God. In the language which was once applied to a Author's healing power, we may say age, ask it, it shall speak for itself.

subject of its to you, It is of Let it tell you

its own tale, and disclose to you its own pretensions. But when you consult it, do it justice by looking at

it as a whole. If its demands be deep and exclusive, reaching to the innermost of your thoughts, and the most minute of your moral activities, its gratuities are also rich and equal to all your necessities. If it calls for sacrifices which you reckon severe, it proffers rewards which are infinitely more than a compensation. If it shuts you out from gratifications which you now hold dear, it opens to you others, which are inconceivably more delightful. If it requires you to "put off the old man with his deeds, and to put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness," it accompanies the requisition with an assurance, that "it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." If it proposes so entire a revolution in your present views and feelings, it does so, because it has a heaven in reserve for you, and this is indispensable to a participation of its joys.

A second subterfuge, under which men are prone to shelter themselves, as a substitute for genuine Christianity is, what has long been called legality, or an attempt to work out their own salvation, without a due dependance on the grace of God, as it flows through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Persons of this description may be said to come a little nearer to the Bible than the former. They have some acquaintance with the scheme of its doctrines, and they regard it as bearing emphatically on the concerns of a future world. Feeling themselves involved in the responsibilities which religion lays open, and exposed to the retribution which it foretels, they have no leisure to theorize on it as a matter of

general utility, but are constrained to take it up as a matter of individual concern.

The law of its God

has touched their consciences, denouncing its curse upon every one who continueth not in all things which are written in the book of it to do them. This, as it well may, has filled them with alarm. They perceive an obvious contrast between the very letter of the law, and the general tenor of their conduct; and thus, they stand before it, self-condemned. In spite of every effort to resist the conviction, it is forced upon them; that, if there be any thing in religion, there can be nothing for them but "a fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation." To quiet this alarm, they betake themselves to an outward amendment of life. hitherto, they were openly vicious in their conduct, they become equally open in their observance of the rules of outward decency. They study the Scriptures, and draw from them the maxims of a dry morality. They show respect to the stated observances of Christianity; and exhibit, in the whole of their intercourse with society, the signs of a decided transformation. So fair is their aspect, and so hopeful their tendencies, that the Charity which thinketh no evil, begins to claim them as a part of the Christian brotherhood.

If,

All this is good in its place. It is a tribute to religion, which even impiety itself is sometimes constrained to pay. It is sometimes the first symptom of a genuine transition from sin to godliness; but if it be rested in, as the sum total of that transition, it is radically defective. There is a feeling of impotency,

as well as of short-coming, which has a firm hold of the Christian heart. There is a soul as well as a body in practical religion; and the former must animate the latter, in order to constitute a real subsistence in the church of the living God. There is an inward glowing of love, as well as an outward accordance with rule, which must give freshness and beauty to those activities which he will recognize as obedience to his law. There is an expiation of sins that are past, a cleansing and quickening of the springs of action, and a gradual emancipation from the bondage of corruption, which must be sought after, and must be obtained by a direct application to the Christian atonement, before there can be any value in outward compliance with the Christian precept, as the index of a spiritual transition "from the power of Satan unto God." The question, with the man who wishes to make sure of this transition, will not be, Am I an altered being in the sight of men? but, What am I in the sight of God? Is there a new principle of holy vitality working within me, and sustaining my outward conformity? Am I in some measure conscious of a fervid consecration of heart to the services of religion—of a settled, or, at least, a settling delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man”—of an abiding contrition of spirit, produced by a feeling of heinous delinquency, and mellowed by an apprehension of mercy—nay, of a simple reliance on him, who "of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption?" These are some of the queries which offer themselves for solution, by the man who lays

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claim to the inheritance of the Christian, and so long as he fails to meet them with satisfactory replies, he has reason to stand in doubt of himself. Christianity may do much to overawe a man, when he views it as a ministration of fear-it may do much to train him to an outward uniformity, when he views it as a system of moral institutes; but, till the inspiration which it breathes, the purity which it generates, and the love which it enkindles, are conveyed to his heart, he must be destitute of its saving efficacy. "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Father, Father."

Unhappily for man, however, he can do much to impose upon himself in this department. When he first enters on the routine of outward observances, he must feel it irksome, because it is uncongenial to his inclinations; but, as he proceeds, his mind is gradually formed to it by the power of habit, aided by the imagined relief which it affords him, or the hopes of impunity to which it gives rise. Thus, to a great extent at least, the irksomeness is neutralized; and mistaking its absence for the presence of its opposite, he makes himself believe that he is just as much a Christian as others around him. Nay, there is a species of pleasure which he may derive from the very subjects in religion, which come in succession under his view. They may go to his heart in a particular way. He may acquire a fondness for them, on the same principle on which he is fond of what is grand or romantic, or tenderly touching in a well-executed fiction. He may work them into