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sentimentalist might expatiate among beauteous and interesting spectacles, amiable mothers shedding their graceful tears over the tomb of departed infancy; high-toned integrity maintaining itself unsullied amid the allurements of corruption; benevolence plying its labours of usefulness; and patriotism earning its proud reward, in the testimony of an approving people. Here, then, you have compassion, and natural affection, and justice, and public spirit-but would it not be a glaring perversion of language to say, that there was godliness in a world, where there was no feeling and no conviction about God.

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In the midst of this busy scene, let God reveal himself, not to eradicate these principles of action-but giving his sanction to whatsoever things are just, and lovely, and honourable, and of good report, to make himself known, at the same time as the Creator and Upholder of all things, and as the Being with whom all his rational offspring had to do. Is this solemn announcement from the voice of the Eternal to make no difference upon them? Are those principles which might flourish and be sustained on a soil of atheism, to be counted enough even after the wonderful truth of a living and a reigning God has burst upon the world? You are just ;-right, indispensably right. You say you have asserted no more than your own. But this property is not your own. He gave it to you, and he may call upon you to give to him an account of your stewardship. are compassionate;-right also. But what if he set up the measure of the sanctuary upon your compassion? and, instead of a desultory instinct, excited to feeling by a moving picture of sensibility, and limited in effect to a humble fraction of your expenditure, he call upon you to love your neighbour as yourself, and to maintain this principle at the expense of self-denial, and in the midst of manifold provocations? You love your children;-still indispensably right. But what if he should say, and he has actually said it, that you may know how to give good gifts unto your children, and still be evil? and that if you love father, or mother, or wife, or children, more than him, you are not worthy of him? The lustre of your accomplishments dazzles the eye of your neighbourhood, and you bask with a delighted heart in the sunshine of glory. But what if he should

say, that his glory, and not your own, should be the constant aim of your doings? and that if you love the praise of men more than the praise of God, you stand, in the pure and spiritual records of heaven, convicted of idolatry? You love the things of the world; and the men of the world, coming together in judgment upon you, take no offence at it. But God takes offence at it. He says,—and is he not right in saying ?—that if the gift withdraw the affections from the Giver, there is something wrong; that the love of these things is opposite to the love of the Father; and that, unless you withdraw your affections from a world that perisheth, you will perish along with it. Surely if these, and such like principles, may consist with the atheism of a world where God is unthought of and unknown, -you stand convicted of a still deeper and more determined atheism, who under the revelation of a God challenging the honour that is due unto his name, are satisfied with your holding in society, and live without him in the world.

SERMON V.

THE JUDGMENT OF MEN, COMPARED WITH THE JUDGMENT

OF GOD.

1 CORINTHIANS IV. 3, 4.

"With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of, or of man's judgment-he that judgeth me is the Lord."

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III. WHEN two parties meet together on the business of adjusting their respective claims, or when, in the language of our text, they come together in judgment, the principles on which they proceed must depend on the relation in which they stand to each other and we know not a more fatal, or a more deeplaid delusion, than that by which the principles, applicable to the case of a man entering into judgment with his fellow-men, are transferred to the far different case of man's entering into judgment with his God. Job seems to have been aware of this difference, and at times to have been humbled by it. In reference to man, he stood on triumphant ground, and often spoke of it in a style of boastful vindication. No one could impeach his justice. No one could question his generosity. And he made his confident appeal to the remembrance of those around him, when he says of himself, that he delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him; that the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him, and he caused the widow's heart to sing for joy; that he put on righteousness, and it clothed him, and his judgment was as a robe and a diadem; that he was eyes to the blind, and feet was he to the lame; that he was a father to the poor, and the cause that he knew not, he searched out. On these grounds

did he challenge the judgment of man, and actually obtained it. For we are told, because he did all this, that when the ear heard him, then it blessed him, and when the eye saw him, it gave witness unto him.

There is not a more frequent exercise of mind in society, than that by which the members of it form and declare their judgment of each other-and the work of thus deciding is a work which they all share in, and on which, perhaps, there is not a day of their lives wherein they are not called upon to expend some measure of attention and understanding—and we know not if there be a single topic that more readily engages the conversation of human beings—and often do we utter our own testimony, and hear the testimony of others to the virtues and vices of the absent-and out of all this has arisen a standard of estimation-and it is such a standard as many may actually reach, and some have actually exceeded-and thus it is, that it appears to require a very extended scale of reputation to take in all the varieties of human character-and while the lower extremity of it is occupied by the dishonest, and the perfidious, and the glaringly selfish, who are outcasts from general respect ; on the higher extremity of it, do we behold men, to whom are awarded, by the universal voice, all the honours of a proud and unsullied excellence-and their walk in the world is dignified by the reverence of many salutations-and as we hear of their truth and their uprightness, and their princely liberalities, and of a heart alive to every impulse of sympathy, and of a manner sweetened by all the delicacies of genuine kindness;-Who does not see that, in this assemblage of moral graces and accomplish. ments, there is enough to satisfy man, and to carry the admiration of man? and can we wonder if, while we gaze on so fine a specimen of our nature, we should not merely pronounce upon him an honourable sentence at the tribunal of human judgment, but we should conceive of him that he looks as bright and faultless in the eye of God, and that he is in every way meet for his presence and his friendship in eternity.

Now, if there be any truth in the distinction of our text; if a man may have the judgment of his fellows, and yet be utterly unfit for contending in judgment with God; if there be any em

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phasis in the consideration, that he is God, and not man; or any delusion in conceiving of him, that he is altogether like unto ourselves, may not all that ready circulation of praise, and of acknowledgment, which obtains in society, carry a most ruinous, and a most bewitching influence along with it? It is not possible that on the applause of man there may be reared a most treacherous self-complacency? Might not we build a confidence before God, on this sandy foundation? Think you not, that it is just this ill-supported confidence which shuts out from many a heart the humiliating doctrine of the gospel? Is there no such imagination as that because we are so well able to stand our ground before the judgment of the world, we shall be equally well able to stand our ground before the judgment-seat of the great day? Are there not many who, upon this very principle, count themselves rich and to have need of nothing? And have you never met with men of character, and estimation in society, who, surrounded by the gratulations of their neighbourhood, find the debasing views of humanity, which are set before us in the New Testament, to be beyond their comprehension; who are utterly in the dark, as to the truth and the justness of such representations, and with whom the voice of God is therefore deafened by the voice and the testimony of men? They see not themselves in that character of vileness and of guilt which he ascribes to them. They are blind to the principle of the text, that he is not a man; and that they may not be able to answer him, though they may be able to meet the every reproach, and to hold out the lofty vindication against every charge, which any one of their fellows may prefer. And thus it is, that many live in the habitual neglect of a salvation which they cannot see that they require; and spend their days in an insidious security, from which nothing but the voice of the last messenger, or the call of the last trumpet, shall awaken them.

To do away this delusion, we shall advert to two leading points of distinction between the judgment of men and that of God. There is a distinction founded upon the claims which God has a right to prefer against us, when compared with the claims which our fellow-men have a right to prefer against us; ---and there is a distinction founded upon that clearer and more

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