at large without it, not a step can be taken in the path of righteousness. We may bear the name of Christ, our foreheads may have been sealed with his cross at baptism, we may have all the outward badges, all the tokens of discipleship; but if we have not the Spirit of Christ we are none of his. The capacity of having such a portion of it which makes it possible for us to ask for and obtain more, is imparted to us at baptism; that power of asking, and obtaining, and improving, is the great privilege of discipleship-the great instrument of the benefits we derive from being translated from a state of nature into one of grace. But then the Spirit of God ordinarily works by the instrumentality of man, and he must be resorted to in the use of them: he was known to mankind, to all the world, first by giving the volume of inspiration; then by enlightening their minds to the discernment of its meaning, by the ministry of instituted teachers, by the sacraments, by all the means of grace, and all the methods of education. It becomes, therefore, the sacred duty of every Christian community, to take care that the Lord's people shall not lack opportunity of profiting by those means; that they shall have places and times for the public worship of God, and for the ministration of those ordinances to which the promise of the Spirit is annexed. This is the best method we can adopt for preserving our poorer brethren, not only in the unity of the Church, but in the bond of peace, and in quietness of life, and in habits of sobriety and industry, and in obedience to the laws.

What, then, is the inference which I would persuade you to draw from these considerations, with reference to the object of this discourse? Is it not too obvious to need explanation? Does any one who now hears me, believe that this country can be saved from the dangers which threaten its peace and security, by any other means whatever than that of a great moral regeneration, or that such a regeneration can be wrought by any other instrumentality than that of religion? Is it not a false and delusive empyricism, which holds out to us for the evils that afflict, any other panacea than Christianity? Is there any radical cure for pauperism, any infallible antidote against listlessness and insecurity, any specific remedy for intemperance and dishonesty, but the Gospel? Will any thing, think you, short of vital religion, neutralize the malignity of those elements which have long been fermenting in the depths below, and are now heaving the surface, and may at any moment explode beneath our feet? Government may legislate, the arm of justice may be bared, the sword of vengeance may be unsheathed-nay, more, associated charity may exhaust her energies and resources; but, after all, it is upon the faithfulness, the zeal, and the diligence of the ministers of religion, and upon the Spirit of God blessing their righteous efforts, that you must depend for ultimate security. And, if we mistake not, the time is not far distant, when Christianity, not perhaps without a tremendous conflict, shall vindicate its own supremacy, and authority, as the true foundation and cementing principle of government and social order. "It is our conscious belief," says one of the most profound and eloquent of modern writers-" It is our conscious belief, that our established Church is an indispensable safeguard against the desolating floods of irreligion. Leave us our existing machinery, and provide that right and efficient men be appointed to work it, and the country may still be saved; and humanly speaking, its Christian instructors will be its only saviours. The reformers of our national morality will be the reformers that will do us good: this is the great specific for the people's well-being; and however traduced it may be by

the liberalism of our age, or undervalued in the estimation of inerely secular politicians, it is by the Christianity of our towns and parishes that the country shall stand or fall."

But, then, our existing machinery, excellent as it is in itself, is not sufficient to meet the existing demand for its produce. It has not grown with the growth, nor strengthened with the strength, of the rapidly increasing population. Neither has the field been widened, nor the number of shepherds augmented, in any just proportion to the increase of the flock. Something, indeed, was done, in more auspicious times, by the legislature of this Christian country, towards preserving and perpetuating its Christianity, by grants of money for the erection of additional churches. And I would fain be told by those who complain of such an expenditure of the public resources, I would fain be told whether the people at large would have been benefitted in an equal degree, whether vice and profaneness would have been equally checked, morality and virtue equally promoted, the interests of society equally strengthened and advanced in every direction, had the same amount of money been expended on bridges, or tunnels, or jails, or edifices for the attainments of science, or the receptacle of the arts. For what was then done, inadequate as it was to the wants that require it, we are thankful; and our poor brethren, too, in the country ought to rejoice in the reflection, that by such an expenditure nearly three hundred thousand persons enjoy, and will continue for generations to enjoy, the advantages of religious instruction, and the opportunities of common worship, and the means of edification and grace, who were before utterly destitute of it.

But for the means of supplying these advantages to the multitudes which are yet unprovided for, we may no longer look to the legislature of this Christian country; we must depend upon the Christian liberality of individuals: and individual liberality has already nearly equalled in its results the benevolence of the state; for it has effected an increase of church accommodation in nine hundred and fifty-nine parishes, and an amount of two hundred and forty thousand additional sittings, of which one hundred and seventy-eight thousand are fee, and appropriated only to the use of that class for whom it is the especial duty of the Christian Church to make provision. The Gospel is to be preached to the poor: and yet how utterly inadequate is the provision which it has hitherto been enabled to make, when compared with the breadth and depth of the spiritual destitution that requires it; and how inconsiderable are the sums that have been contributed towards a society, which, in proportion to its numbers, hath wrought a larger amount of unmixed good than any other which claims the support of the Christian public: a society, which I am bold to say has a paramount and sacred claim upon the charity of every member of the Church of England, whom Providence has endowed with the means of doing good. “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." If it be said, as sometimes it has been said, "Let the clergy look to it, they are the persons chiefly concerned; let them contribute:" we answer, They have contributed, and they are contributing -I will not say beyond what might be reasonably expected of them, but far beyond their due proportion, as compared with the lay members of our church. But will any one venture to assert, that it is the peculiar concern of the clergy; that it is not his own interest, that it is not every man's interest, as well as the interest of the clergy, that the country should be religious and moral, that the land should be Christianized, that it should be peopled with well-instructed,

well principled, well ordered members of society, in every class, and especially in the lower orders, overrun and desolated by drunkards, and spendthrifts, and robbers, and incendiaries, and assassins? And will any one deny, that the alternative must depend on the instruction of the people, and that therefore it is the interest of individual societies? for it is the duty of every Christian to do all that can be done to increase the means and opportunities of sound religious teaching to the great mass of the population. And, oh, is it not a sickening thought, is it not a lamentable proof of our inconsistency as a Christian people, that the amount of money collected in this city, in fifteen years, should not exceed one-twentieth of the sum every year paid as the duty upon that poisonous beverage, which is destroying the bodies, and ruining the souls, of so many of our poor brethren?

Be not offended, then, if I entreat you, before you determine upon the amount of your contributions this day, to propose to yourselves these questions: "Next to the working out my own salvation (and I thank God for the means and opportunities which his Church affords me for doing that), can any thing be more important than that I should contribute to the salvation of my brethren, and place within their reach the means and appliances which I myself am fortunate enough to possess? Can I in any other way more directly, or more effectually, contribute to the glory of God, to the progress of his Gospel, to the well-being of my country, to its present safety and its future prosperity? And, in the furtherance of this object, so important, so sacred, so dear in the eyes of God, so benevolent to mankind, what have I hitherto contributed? what efforts, what prayers, what portions of my worldly substance? And if on this occasion, which presents a distinct and unquestionable opportunity for setting forward God's glory in the salvation of my brethren, if I withhold that which is in my power to give, in what other way do I intend to evince my regard-on what other object shall I bestow the means I deny to them?" Shall I suggest the answer? By some object of mere secular and transient interest; by some of the pageants, or amusements, or the vanities of that world which we are commanded not to love. Let me add one word, in conclusion, with reference to the Apostle's closing argument: "And so much the more as ye see the day approaching." That a day" is approaching, of awful interest to the Church of Christ in this nation, nay, that it is already come, no one can doubt who has noted the signs of the times, and watched in their combinations and workings the elements of our civil and religious polity. The conflict between good and evil, which is and ever will be waged, until the Gospel shall have achieved its final triumph, has for sometime past assumed a more determined aspect. That the crisis, which appears to be drawing nigh, will issue in the final exaltation of the true Church, we have an assurance in the recorded promise of Him who has built it on a rock. But surely it is a time for all those who desire to avert the fiery trials by which it must otherwise be purified, to exhort one another as they see the day approaching, to increased degrees of vigilance, of personal holiness, and a greater exemplarity of devotion, and a more decided acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Jehovah, and to larger measures of charity; provoking one another to good works by a combined and vigorous effort in the cause of God and Christ.

Such, my brethren, is the solemn call which the Church addresses, through its unworthy minister, to every individual that now hears me. May that Holy Spirit which sanctifies and sustains the Church, dispose you to obey it.

452

THE SOUL AND ITS CAPACITIES.

RIGHT REV. J. B. SUMNER, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER*.
ST. MARY, LAMBETH, APRIL 20, 1834.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”—GEN, ii. 7.

SUCH is the account of that mysterious principle within us which we call the soul; that part of our nature, in which resides the power of thinking and desiring, of hoping and fearing, of suffering and enjoying. It is not like the visible and tangible body, which is described as being formed out of the dust of the earth by the plastic hand of the Creator; but it proceeded immediately from God, who breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And on this account, man is said to have been made in the image of God, after his likeness. It is the soul, and not the body, of man, which bears he image of God. God is a spirit; and the soul is immaterial: God is all-wise, all-good, all-intelligent; and the soul partakes of these properties, is gifted with intellect, and is capable, in a low and humble degree, of that wisdom and goodness which the Almighty possesses in perfection.

I propose to direct your attention this morning to this, and to the properties of this, the superior part of our nature. It has an immediate bearing on the subject which we are desirous to promote, the education of children, the nurture of infants in the fear and admonition of the Lord; and it is a subject, which, by God's blessing, may be profitable to all. It tends to shew, that the care of the soul, the spiritual and immortal soul, is the first and great concern. May those who make it so, be strengthened and confirmed; may those who neglect it, be brought to a better mind.

First, then, among the properties of the soul, let me consider ITS CAPACITY OF ENJOYMENT, AND ITS CAPACITY OF SUFFERING. I could appeal on this point, to the experience of every one who has lived but a few years in this fallen world: few have done so who cannot bear inward witness of what the soul is capable of suffering. How acute is the sense of disappointed hope. how sad the anticipation of expected evil: how bitter the feeling of desire, long indulged, and still deferred, making the heart sick how intense are the pangs of sorrow; how intolerable the agony of remorse! The Holy Spirit, who knows what is in the heart of man, has given a fearful description of the misery in those words of Moses, which forewarned the Israelites of the consequences of disobedience: "The Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee;' and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou

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shal say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see." How intense must have been the sufferings of David, under the violence at once of natural sorrow, and the consequences of the indignation of God. David, we read, “besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth. And the elders of his house arcse, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth: but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them. And again, when his son Absalom rose in rebellion against him, and the only safety of the father was in the death of the son, the King went up into his chamber and wept, and as he went, thus he said: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absal m, my son, my son! Need I add another example? The case of the Lord Jesus Christ will forcibly occur to all, when, in the garden of Gethsemane, he kneeled down and prayed, saying, "Father, if thou wilt, remove this cup from me. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.”

Such is a specimen of the sufferings of which the soul is capable. I will only remind you, that God, who in his justice remembers mercy, seldom dispenses in this world unmixed suffering. To the wicked, even, there is commonly some hope of relief, which mitigates the sense of suffering; to the righteous, there is always an alleviation. Think, then, what must be the weight of unmitigated suffering, aggravated by the assurance, that it must endure for ever. Think of the description which is given in Revelations xiv., of those who "shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."

In proportion to the capacity of suffering in the soul, is also its capacity of enjoyment. We have some knowledge of this likewise. We can conceive the joy by which the heart of Jacob was elated, when his sons "told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them; and when he saw the waggons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: and Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before die." We can conceive the feelings of David-for such is human life, that the same character (and it will be commonly found) will afford us instances both of sorrow and of joy: we can conceive, I say, his feelings when he found himself seated upon the throne of Israel, and the promise made unto his children after him, and the natural satisfaction arising from greatness and prosperity was enhanced by the spiritual gratification of the consciousness of Divine favour: "Then went King David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing in thy sight, O Lord God; but thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house for a great while to come." How intense again must have been the delight of the aged Simeon, when the sig' t which he had been so long expecting was granted to him, and it was revealed to him, that the child which i parents were now presenting in the templ was indeed the promised Saviour, and he exclaimed in the joy of his heart "Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

But as in this preparatory world, sorrow comes attended with mitigation, so there is always some draw-back to our joy. Even if the joy itself were perfect, there is fear it would be short lived; and He that gave may see fit to take