should be doubtful. Let our love to every thing in the world be doubtful but this; but let us love Him, and love Him so as to keep His commandments; so as to keep all His commandments, and those particularly which respect the teaching and manifestation of His doctrine; those doctrines particularly which are the most contemned, and the most out of fashion. Happy men! to whom Christ will at last say, "You are they who have followed Me in the regen. eration. You have continued with Me in My temptations, and now I appoint to you a kingdom." May God so bless the end of our preaching to us all!

DISCOURSE TWENTY SEVENTH.

ROBERT HALL, A.M.

THIS distinguished sacred orator was born at Arnsby, near Leicester, on the second of May, 1764. Before he was nine years of age he read and reread, with intense interest, Edwards on the Will and Butler's Analogy. After making great progress in study under other instructors, he entered Bristol Institution as a student of theology; and in 1780, at the early age of sixteen, was ordained to the ministry. The next year, however, he entered King's College, Aberdeen, was the first scholar in his class, and came to be considered as a model of social, moral, and religious excellence. For five years next succeeding 1785, Hall acted as assistant-pastor at Broadmead and classical tutor in the Academy. In 1790 he succeeded Robert Robinson as pastor of the Baptist Church at Cambridge, and his labors were not only greatly admired but richly blessed in the extension of religion. In 1804 his health, never confirmed, became exceedingly feeble, and his mind suffered several temporary aberrations, which made it necessary that he should resign his pastoral charge. These severe calamities were sanctified to his spiritual good; and, with a deepened piety, it became his custom, henceforward, each birth-day, to solemnly dedicate himself afresh to God. In 1807 Hall assumed the pastorate at Leicester, which he successfully filled for nearly twenty years. In 1826 he became the successor of Dr. Ryland in Broadmead, Bristol, where he labored till the time of his decease, in February 1831.

Hall's extraordinary powers of pulpit eloquence are universally known. His voice was feeble, and his delivery not graceful, but the power of his language was irresistible. Multitudes hung upon his lips with breathless silence, and went away penetrated with a sense of his wonderful pulpit abilities. The qualities which rendered him, as a preacher, so impressive, seem to have been an imperial and richly-stored fancy; an exquisite appreciation of the beautiful; definiteness of aim; a distinct conception of his thoughts, and a complete mastery of lan guage in which to invest them; the ready command of ample and varied proofs and illustrations; a cogent, but easy, natural logic; great powers of analyzation; perfect abstraction and self-absorption in his subject

an earnestness, seriousness of spirit and manner; and a certain tone of kindness, which insensibly drew to the preacher the hearts of the hearers.

As a writer, Hall has always been held in the highest estimation. "There is a living writer," said Dugald Stuart, "who combines the beau ties of Johnson, Addison, and Burke, without their imperfections. It is a dissenting minister of Cambridge, the Rev. Robert Hall. Whoever wishes to see the English language in perfection, must read his writ ings." He was a great admirer and constant reader of the Greek and Roman classics, and none of his compositions are destitute of those delicate gleams of imagery and felicitous turns of expression which led the Editor of the "London Magazine" to pronounce Hall's style "one of the clearest and simplest-the least encumbered with its own beautyof any which has ever been written." Few of the Sermons of Hall, unfortunately, come to us entire; as he seldom committed them to writing, though they were generally elaborated in his mind. His great sermon is that which is here given. It was preached at Bristol in October, and at Cambridge in November of the year 1800, and published at the urgent solicitation of his friends. Though unwritten at the time of its delivery, Hall afterward wrote it out himself, by spells, partly while lying on his back, from extreme pain. Though very long, it can not be reduced in size, and is therefore given entire. The notes only are omitted.

MODERN INFIDELITY CONSIDERED.

"Without God in the world.”—EPHES. ii. 12.

As the Christian ministry is established for the instruction of men, throughout every age, in truth and holiness, it must adapt itself to the ever-shifting scenes of the moral world, and stand ready to repel the attacks of impiety and error, under whatever form they may appear. The Church and the world form two societies so distinct, and are governed by such opposite principles and maxims, that, as well from this contrariety as from the express warnings of Scripture, true Christians must look for a state of warfare, with this consoling assurance, that the Church, like the burning bush beheld by Moses in the land of Midian, may be encompassed with flames, but will never be consumed.

When she was delivered from the persecuting power of Rome, she only experienced a change of trials. The oppression of exterual violence was followed by the more dangerous and insidious

attacks of internal enemies. The freedom and inquiry claimed and asserted at the Reformation degenerated, in the hands of men who professed the principles without possessing the spirit of the Reform. ers, into a fondness for speculative refinements; and, consequently, into a source of dispute, faction, and heresy. While Protestants attended more to the points on which they differed than to those on which they agreed-while more zeal was employed in settling ceremonies and defending subtleties than in enforcing plain revealed truths the lovely fruits of peace and charity perished under the storms of controversy.

In this disjointed and disordered state of the Christian Church, they who never looked into the interior of Christianity were apt to suspect, that to a subject so fruitful in particular disputes must attach a general uncertainty; and that a religion. founded on revelation could never have occasioned such discordancy of principle and practice among its disciples. Thus infidelity is the joint offspring of an irreligious temper and unholy speculation, employed, not in examining the evidences of Christianity, but in detecting the vices and imperfections of professing Christians. It has passed through vari ous stages, each distinguished by higher gradations of impiety; for when men arrogantly abandon their guide, and willfully shut their eyes on the light of heaven, it is wisely ordained that their errors shall multiply at every step, until their extravagance confutes itself, and the mischief of their principles works its own antidote. That such has been the progress of infidelity will be obvious from a slight survey of its history.

Lord Herbert, the first and purest of our English freethinkers, who flourished in the beginning or the reign of Charles the First, did not so much impugn the doctrine or the morality of the Scriptures as attempt to supersede their necessity, by endeavoring to show that the great principles of the unity of God, a moral government, and a future world, are taught with sufficient clearness by the light of nature. Bolingbroke, and some of his successors, advanced much further, and attempted to invalidate the proofs of the moral charac ter of the Deity, and consequently all expectations of rewards and punishments; leaving the Supreme Being no other perfections than those which belong to a first cause, or almighty contriver. After him, at a considerable distance, followed Hume, the most subtle, if not the most philosophical, of the Deists; who, by perplexing the relations of cause and effect, boldly aimed to introduce a universal skepticism, and to pour a more than Egyptian darkness into the whole region of morals. Since his time skeptical writers have

sprung up in abundance, and infidelity has allured multitudes to its standard; the young and superficial, by its dexterous sophistry, the vain by the literary fame of its champions, and the profligate by the licentiousness of its principles. Atheism the most undisguised has at length begun to make its appearance.

Animated by numbers and emboldened by success, the infidels of the present day have given a new direction to their efforts, and impressed a new character on the ever-growing mass of their impious speculations.

By uniting more closely with each other, by giving a sprinkling of irreligion to all their literary productions, they aim to engross the formation of the public mind; and, amid the warmest professions of attachment to virtue, to effect an entire disruption of morality from religion. Pretending to be the teachers of virtue and the guides of life, they propose to revolutionize the morals of mankind; to regenerate the world by a process entirely new; and to rear the temple of virtue, not merely without the aid of religion, but on the renunciation of its principles and the derision of its sanctions. Their party has derived a great accession of numbers and strength from events the most momentous and astonishing in the political world, which have divided the sentiments of Europe between hope and terror; and which, however they may issue, have, for the present, swelled the ranks of infidelity. So rapidly, indeed, has it advanced since this crisis, that a great majority on the Continent, and in England a considerable proportion of those who pursue literature as a profession, may justly be considered as the open or disguised abettors of atheism.

With respect to the skeptical and religious systems, the inquiry at present is not so much which is the truest in speculation as which is the most useful in practice; or, in other words, whether morality will be best promoted by considering it as a part of a great and comprehensive law, emanating from the will of a supreme, omnipotent legislator; or as a mere expedient, adapted to our present situation, enforced by no other motives than those which arise from the prospects and interests of the present state. The absurdity of atheism having been demonstrated so often and so clearly by many eminent men that this part of the subject is exhausted, I should hasten immediately to what I have more particularly in view, were I not apprehensive a discourse of this kind may be expected to contain some statement of the argument in proof of a Deity; which, there fore I shall present in as few and plain words as possible.

When we examine a watch, or any other piece of machinery we