you with discretion too; what I say to you is the result of serious deliberation, and in the retirement of my chamber I consider well the consequences of every doctrine which I deliver from my pulpit. I never have advised, and never will advise, a dissolution of those social. and civil obligations, which are not only perfectly compatible with our profession as Christians, but which Christ has recognised, cemented, and sanctified.

In order to become Christians, it is not necessary to abjure our trades, our occupations, our several relations in life; it is not necessary so to sear and indurate the heart, as to render it incapable of love, of friendship, and all the innocent and endearing enjoyments connected with them; but it is necessary to dissolve those ties which bind us to the wheel of fashion wheresoever it may turn, and howsoever it may defile us; it is necessary to cross that Rubicon which rolls between us and God in this life, and which is typified by the impassable gulph between Lazarus and Dives in the next; it is necessary to pass that line of demarcation which virtually separates the Christian from the unchristian world, to array ourselves under his banner who battled for us against all the spirits of evil and of darkness, to stand up in manful opposition to those sentiments and actions which militate with the mandates of our Saviour, and so to evange

lize ourselves and our professions, that whatsoever we do shall be done in righteousness, "whatsoever we do being done unto the Lord.” If we do this, we shall be saved; if we do it not, we shall be condemned. This is a simple position, and the simplest among you must understand it fully. Hesitate not then in your choice. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. Must interest decide your preference? Look fairly at the felicities of heaven, and compare well their brightness and their permanence with the dull and perishable vanities of earth. Do the old associations of sense and selfishness cling around you and bind you to the world? Cut them remorselessly away, for "he that is found in Christ is a new creature;" not new in being absolved from all the obligations of civilized humanity; not new, in virtue of a second and miraculous regeneration, conferred without desert, and ascertained by a special and instantaneous illumination; not new, in being bowed and bound to the yoke of papal infallibility in violation of all duties to kings, to country, and to parents; but new, in the progressive acquisition of a clearer insight into the essential truths of the ever blessed Gospel; new, in seeing by the eye of faith, how the corruptions of his own nature are washed away by the blood of the great atonement, and his conduct purified by the assistance of the Holy Spirit; new, in consult

ing the will of the Creator in utter disregard of his own inclination, or of the inclinations of sinful, erring creatures like himself; and new, in perceiving the mercy of God in every dispensation which before alarmed him, and in looking forward, through every dark vicissitude of perfidious men and fallen fortunes, to those realms of unimaginable joy, "where tears shall be wiped from every eye, and where there shall be pain and sorrow no more." Amen.

SERMON XXXII.

ON THE OFFICE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST, AND THE MODERN MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEL.

MALACHI III. 1.

Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare my way before me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant.

IT has been the invariable custom of the Christian Church to commemorate particular seasons of the year with appropriate ceremonies and instructions, a custom which may be supposed to have originated in Divine commandment, and which has been found extremely beneficial in quickening the energies of devotion and in directing them to a determinate object. Conformably to this laudable and useful practice, I have adduced the words of my text as introductory to the fittest subject for our consideration at the present time, and as we shall soon be called upon to celebrate the most glorious epoch, in our spiritual history, the advent of our blessed Saviour himself, we shall do well to

prepare ourselves for that joyful occasion by giving some attention to the character and office of his forerunner. The Son of God, though he made his appearance in the world "veiled in humility" and among the lowliest of its inhabitants, was not ushered into it without circumstances divinely provided to authenticate his person and to attest his Divinity. A long succession of prophecies and revelations foretold the manner and the object of his mission. The promise dimly shadowed out to Eve was brightened unto Abraham, and each succeeding patriarch and prophet, from Jacob down to Malachi, beheld in clearer prospective the redemption of mankind. But it was in the counsels of Heaven that a special messenger should precede the immediate descent of the Messiah. There was to be heard "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a high way for our God." There was to come a second Elijah, to "turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the hearts of the disobedient unto the wisdom of the just." To increase the dignity of this messenger, the spirit of prophecy had ceased in Israel for three hundred years, and Malachi the last of the prophets foretold his coming. To attest his mission, his nativity was miraculous and his education wonderful. In the old age of his parents he was born, and