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sistent! How rational! Disinclination exclusively unfitted men to obey. Could this be excuse? Could the kingdom of heaven be arrested in its march because of this disaffection ?-Besides, these overtures are Divine means to an end: "Look, ye blind, that ye may see.”

6. The proper ground, on which the necessity of Divine influence can only be rested, is placed before us. It is not necessary to complete and justify moral government. That is a system of rule always adapted to the condition of its subjects. It is unchanged from the beginning. We are changed, but in no such manner as can absolve us from its authority. But had we ceased to be intelligent, we must have ceased to be now accountable. God's ways are equal. His commandments are not grievous. They were given for life. They are ordained for good. We possess sufficient understanding to comply with them: the understanding is the same to which they were originally addressed. But it is turned aside from them: and they work wrath. Is the Deity bound to furnish us with the will to keep his law, or to perform any of those evangelic duties which are but modifications of his law? That Influence must be an extra-judicial favour: its bestowment in any respect of moral government would be to weaken and dishonour it. But it is necessary to salvation. No sinner would seek that salvation by a single step, but as this induced him. That salvation is by grace: this is its appropriate adjunct and causal power.

7. This is a most humbling fact. It leaves nothing to the sinner of boast and pretension. All must be done for him in redeeming him; all must be done for him in applying that redemption. He is as helpless as he is immeritorious. ner, to what art thou fallen! Thou hast not even the desire that it were not thus with thee! Thou possessest not the secret will to be restored! Thou couldst not sink lower than this! Thou couldst not be more utterly wicked! And yet does sinful man even now speak proud things. He complains of this. He is made nought! Nothing is reserved by which he may distinguish himself! His last surviving hold of pride and selfsufficiciency, the determining power of his will in spite of his

affections, strange jargon of absurdity as well as audacious babble of sin!-is taken from him! "I am nothing: I can do nothing." What guilt is on the lips which speak this querulous strain! Yet, were it really felt and sincerely deplored, it would be the strain of hope. So convinced, so penetrated, so abashed, so overwhelmed, under the sense of this most guilty and wicked nothingness,—you shall be complete in Christ, you shall be filled with the Spirit!

8. Any injury that may have befallen our mental capacity lies within our accountability. It is spiritually blind. It is darkness. The light that is in us is darkness. But this is sin. The deceitfulness of sin has made our hearts deceitful above all things. Our understanding errs and wilders in falsehood and infatuation. But its default is not of power but of direction. Its weakness is now seen, because it cannot reason with strength upon folly and depravity. When it is exercised upon truth and righteousness, it resumes its strength. If our understanding be darkened, if our hearts be hardened, these effects are produced by a moral cause. We are disinclined. Is this our acquittal? Then the greater the wickedness, the readier the excuse.

9. Nor is there any mitigation to be found in the transmission of the evil from father to descendant. The difficulty we have not slurred. But, then, what is the evil? Is it something which we disclaim, abhor, renounce? Assuredly, were it so, it would be most unjust. For any impediment to good it offered we could not be held liable. If, however, the evil is what we love, is what we will, of what consequence is its origin? It is our chosen course. "We have loved idols; and after them we will go." It is strange to complain of a necessity in our own allowed motives and our own unshackled volitions. Prove that you must sin, whatever be your contrary will, and you are irresponsible and guiltless: if it is only that you will sin and will to sin, God charges you with nothing more and will punish you for nothing less!

But it is time that these statements and reasonings should end. Men feel themselves wrong, they know that they dissemble, when they ask them. Their consciousness glares upon them

the truth. They are betrayed by their own stiff-necked and stout-hearted protests. They speak out of the froward mouth and with perverse lips. They would sophisticate. They understand the matter after all. Their objections, however subtle, belie their own hearts. Their studied shifts and cavils are "a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death." They deny that there can be difference between the ability which is natural and moral. But they shall be at last convinced. The distinction shall be fearfully explained. We have hitherto spoken of that which is moral: men believe not, repent not, pray not, only because they will not. They enjoy every privilege, every opportunity, every means. God calls, but they refuse. He stretches out his hands, and no man regards. It is all in vain. They make the word of God of none effect. "They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." "They reject the counsel of God against themselves." "They put it away from them." "They wrong their own souls." The appeal is to their nature in its highest and most active principles. "Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Why is not the gospel embraced? "They made light of it." Man's wilful indifference, man's wicked indisposition, rising into hatred and contempt of it, assign the only cause. All is defeated by his aversion. "Wherefore is there a

price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing that he hath no heart to it?" But another inability shall soon be proclaimed! It shall not consist in the want of will. The will is strong and perfect. It rests in a necessity the most unyielding and irreversible. It is restriction, physical, inflexible, eternal. It never opposed your salvation until now. Hitherto you alone withstood that salvation. It has at last raised its invincible front. The bars of iron, the bars of the earth, the bars of the sea, the bars of the pit, have all been loosened, but this never can. While what you might have done shall be seen, now is seen what you can never do. 66 Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able!" From hell is no escape. "They cannot pass that would

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SERMON X.

JESUS CHRIST THE CAUSE AND THE CONSUMMATOR OF ALL THINGS.

HEB. i. 10-12.

"AND, THOU, LORD, IN THE BEGINNING HAST LAID THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH; AND THE HEAVENS ARE THE WORKS OF THINE HANDS: THEY SHALL PERISH; BUT THOU REMAINEST; AND THEY ALL SHALL WAX OLD AS DOth a Garment; AND AS A VEsture shalt tHOU FOLD THEM UP, AND THEY SHALL BE CHANGED: BUT THOU ART THE SAME, AND THY YEARS SHALL NOT FAIL.”

THIS quotation is connected with some preceding ones, this the initial copulative declares: it is, indeed, the last of five passages taken from the Old Testament scriptures, and all similarly applied. The apostrophe winds up a series of inspired texts, closely linked together by repeated and unfailing references to a fixed aim, a common object. "And again," sounds at every interval, and prevents any break. It is the intimation of a treasured fulness which could yield stores of proof and of point a hundred-fold more than those which are now adduced. And none will doubt that it was originally an invocation to the Supreme.* Few will, however, doubt that it has in the present instance a peculiar use. It must exactly follow the scope of the other recitals. They-who will deny or can controvert?—indicate “the Son," our Lord Jesus Christ. This being employed for the same purpose, necessarily falls into the same direction and train of argument. It is spoken of, it is addressed to, the identical Person whom all the rest intend. Indeed, on any other supposition, we might ask,-wholly waiving the force of the illative conjunction,-why such an appeal to the Deity should, amidst

Psa. cii. 25-27.

this specific reasoning, be entertained and urged? Sometimes a doxology swells abruptly from the heart of a sacred writer when he recounts a deliverance wrought in a very signal manner, and at a crisis very unexpected. But this kind of sudden rapture always guards itself. It is a fine parenthesis, which helps rather than delays or entangles the course of illustration and remark. This, however, is not assimilated to such an order of outbursts and acclaims. It is argumentative gradation and reinforcement. Each previously quoted verse might, with equal plausibility, be alleged to constitute an ecstacy of gratitude and worship to the "God of our praise."

Since the glosses of the Racovian schoolmen upon this sacred expression of the truest homage toward the Messiah, it has been generally abandoned as hopelessly impracticable by their successors. They know not how to deal with it. It is set immoveably here. Their criticism, their powers of conjectural emendation, cannot reach the difficulty nor avail their hope. The foundations cannot be destroyed. How they understand it, their contrivances to narrow it, their ingenuities in garbling it, we leave to themselves. Let them ask their conscience or their reason, whether this can be done in the spirit of genuine candour or sound interpretation. We can accept it only in one way. We seek none other. The majesty of the Redeemer is no unwelcome theme. Its sweet savour comes wafting over us as a gale which has rifled the fragrance of Paradise. Yet the beauty, the grandeur, the desirableness, of the doctrine which reveals his Deity, are not its grounds of authority nor its titles to belief. These must stand in independence. And what supports of truth are so strong, so complete, so impregnable, as the testimonies of the Holy Ghost, -of Him who "searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God," of him who is "the Spirit of Christ,"-of him who spake by the prophets,-of him who anointed the apostles,—of him. who inspired both Testaments,-of him who taketh of the things of Christ and showeth them to us? The Holy Ghost witnesseth, -if words have meaning, if statements have purpose, if arguments have issue,-to the eternity, to the immutableness, to the original creative causation, to the final dissolving prerogative, of

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