The corruption is general: you must join in the general humiliation. You have not prayed for your ministers as you ought. You have not assisted them in their labours. You have not been docile and fruitful under their instructions. You have frowned on them, and put them in fear, when they were disposed to be most faithful, You have enticed and allured them into sin, by your worldliness, your vanity, your lax example and spirit. The priests, indeed, are called to the deepest humiliation; they are the first in the procession of penitence, but the people must follow after them. They need to confess and lament their own sins, and those of their families. They must join with their pastors in seeking the Lord, and imploring his grace upon the whole church.

But to return. It is not to topics of humiliation that this address must be confined: we pass on to a more cheering part of our subject.

II. There are MANY GROUNDS OF HOPE IN THE PRESENT DAY, WHICH MAY ENCOURAGE US IN OUR REFORMATION AND REPENTANCE.

1. For GOD IS AT WORK. There is a movement in men's minds towards salvation. There are numerous events in providence concurring to aid the spiritual church. Satan, indeed, is raging; infidelity belches forth her blasphemies; opposition to truth increases in many quarters; men's hearts are failing them for fear; the public press is an instrument of incalculable mischief in various ways, especially that part of it which is known by a name-itself a reproach to a Christian people-THE SUNDAY PRESS. Still God is at work. Mighty things seem to be preparing. Bishops, and pastors, and ministers, and mis

sionaries, and catechists, and schoolmasters, and authors, and translators, are rising up in the churches. The power committed to our own Protestant country stretches over the greater divisions of the globe. The spirit of commerce, and enterprise, and discovery, carries our vessels to every shore. Our foreign bishops and governors, for the most part, favour spiritual religion. The Heathen and Mahommedan nations are moving, inquiring, rousing themselves from the slumber of ages. Popery is shaken to its base, by the spirit of inquiry, and the diffusion of the Scriptures, and of education. Such a time encourages the church to examine herself, and lie low before her God in dust and ashes; to separate from what provokes the Lord, and prepare for his further blessings.

2. Then the MACHINERY OF RELIGIOUS DISSEMINATION is erected, and in operation; and is ready to receive from the Lord, and extend to the utmost corners of the earth, the richest blessings, whenever he may be pleased to 66 cause his face to shine upon us, that we may be saved." Consider, beloved brethren, what preparation there has been made, during the last thirty years, for the ultimate diffusion of the Gospel. Whether it may seem fit to Almighty God to use the present societies chiefly in this work, we know not. The purifying process, however, through which many of them have passed, is far from being unfavourable to the hope of their final most enlarged success. When the members and leading conductors of all our institutions are duly humbled, and led more feelingly and unreservedly to ascribe every measure of success to God alone; when the din of applause and flattery is silenced, and there

is room for God to be glorified, then may we hope that the present machinery will be filled and animated with the Holy Spirit, and carried on to the most blessed results. At all events, we may rejoice at the various plans which they are adopting for the diffusion of the Gospel. What is the spread of education and knowledge amongst the lower orders of every part of the world, but the materials of divine knowledge and love, when God shall descend, as it were, and impregnate it with his grace? What is the public press, with its immense rapidity of production, but a servant, waiting for the divine Master's orders? What are the churches, and other places for the worship of Almighty God, lately erected in our own country and in other lands, but temples ready to be filled with the divine glory? In our own national English establishment, recollect only the two hundred new churches, and the equal number of enlarged old ones, with their five or six hundred thousand new sittings-half of them for the poor-all subserving the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. Remember, also, the equal amount of accommodation in other classes of the Christian communities. Conceive of eleven or twelve hundred thousand additional hearers, as all prepared for the faith and love of Christ; and then tell me how immense and rapid may be the result of the blessing. We know, indeed, that at present much positive evil exists, in the way in which education is conducted, the press employed, and new as well as old churches administered. But HOPE looks upward to the God of all grace; and PENITENCE abhors herself, and lies abased in the dust; and humble and fervent PRAYER addresses itself to the throne of mercy, for the needful gift of the Holy Spirit.

With regard to our missions, what a machinery has been put together; what preparations made; what a conflict begun against the prince of darkness in his own dominions; what a footing obtained in the centre of the Heathen and Mahommedan lands, for planting the camp, and preparing the way, and bringing in the hosts of Messiah's armies! And does not the measure of success already obtained,-the schools established in Heathen countries, the churches founded,-the converts made, the holy communion of saints established,—the happy and triumphant deaths witnessed, -the moralizing and humanizing effects of Christianity on uncivilized man, acknowledged by governors and statesmen,-and the native teachers and missionaries, raised up and sent forth amongst the heathen; do not these dawnings of grace foretell the bursting forth of the meridian day? Is not this twilight the herald and harbinger of the full rising of the Sun of Righteousness?

What, especially, does the movement amongst the ancient people of God, the success of the societies for the conversion of the Jews,-the spirit of inquiry awakened amongst that remarkable people,—the serious discussions going on, the converts made,— the diffusion of the New Testament in Hebrew, and various other languages, amongst them, the education of their children;-what is all this but machinery standing ready for a divine hand to give it the full impulse? And is not the conversion of the Jews connected inseparably with that of the Gentiles? What will the fulness of the Jews be, but as life to a dead and unregenerate Gentile world?

3. But to pass from the hopes beaming upon the

frame-work and instrumentality of religious exertions, what encouragement to a penitent return to God does THE WIDE DISSEMINATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES WITHOUT HUMAN ADDITIONS furnish! This is more than machinery,-this is truth itself, and in the purest form, actually diffused. The honour thus put upon the revelation of Almighty God, the solemn and impressive reverence excited for the authoritative standard of truth, the separation of all the infirm and mingled productions of men from the pure and unmixed Inspirations of the Holy Ghost,-the direct means and source of divine instruction made accessible to the whole human race, the best refutation given of all material errors, and corruptions of the faith of Christ,-the spring of consolation and joy opened widely to a sorrowful world, the peace

ful Interpreter of salvation speaking in its gentle tones to the miserable child of man in all nations,the foundation of civilization, and morals, and humanity, laid in every country, the court of equity and appeal, as to religion, erected, and thrown open to mankind; these are the things which God has done, by the four or five thousand Bible institutions scattered over the world. What a preparation is thus

made insensibly for a return to the simple and commanding doctrines of a crucified Saviour, in every part of the visible church! As all corruption, and controversy, and separation, sprung from a departure from the Bible; may we not hope that purity, peace, and unity of heart will, in due time, arise from a return to it? And what an inestimable and most abundant storehouse do these Bible institutions open for all other societies and agents for religious improvement,