Christ, "by his once suffering for sins, the just for the unjust," hath opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers; "hath purchased a possession" of eternal glory for the myriads whom he has reconciled to God, reclaimed from sin, and consecrated to be holy, upright, exemplary in life, and pure in heart. Return, O! Lord, how long? When shall I come, and appear before God? O! that I might come even to thy seat! As the heart panteth for the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. How lovely are thy dwelling places, my King and my God! How desirable the altars of thy Temple, not made with hands! Open to me the gates of Heaven, that I may go into them and praise thee!" Such are the desires of pious men-such the animated breathings of the believer's spirit; and they shall be fulfilled; and according to their hope, it shall be done unto them; because "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God;" because "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water, by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish;"* because he who once suffered for sins, designs to come again without sin unto salvation, when he shall "present you," believers, "faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy."+

Let no one impeach the righteousness of God in ordaining this substitution of an innocent being in the sinner's place. The dispensation was not imposed uport Christ against his consent. It was not more an ordinance of his Father than his own voluntary assumption. "Lo! I come to do thy will, O! God; the body which thou hast prepared for me," I come to offer upon the cross for the sin of the world! At once he presented himself as the victim, and the priest. And the imagined iniquity of the appointment by which he agonized, bled, and expired for trespasses not his * Eph. v. 25.-27. † Jud. i. 24.

own, is lost in the triumphant splendours of that crown which he now wears; in the unrivalled glories of that name, that dignity, that authority, and that power, with which he is now recompensed.

Suffer, now my brethren, a few words of exhortation. It must be obvious that nothing can be more sacredly incumbent on the Christian than to maintain in his heart a lively impression of the benevolence of the Son of God. Contemplate with fixed eye that splendid representation of moral dignity-of the virtue and perfection of the celestial regions-which the character and transactions of Jesus afforded, when he sojourned on earth. Contemplate the successive griefs through which he passed from his birth to his crucifixion. See him on the fatal tree, cut off, but not for himself; struggling under the pressure of your sins, and bathed in blood by the stripes of mortal execution due to you. It was your offences that planted the cross on the ensanguined hill of Calvary. It was your rebellion that murdered this prince of life. It was to bring you nigh to God, who were afar off from him, that this just one suffered for sins. And remember that the sufferer was God's own Son; uniting a nature derived from the eternal Deity, with human flesh, human feelings, and human sympathies. This being recollected, the poet's language will not be thought unsound, "Heaven wept, that man might smile-Heaven bled, that man might never die." Let love to this divine sufferer, then, be a passion in your souls, second only to love to the Father of mercies who gave him for the life of the world. Turn with disgust and abhorrence from sin, as that which occasioned his suffering-that which crucified the Lord of glory--and that which, as often as it is repeated or indulged, crucifies him afresh, and puts him to open shame. Shall I say, let not sin reign in your mortal bodies? I will not say this; for if you be true believers on the name of the Son of God, you have imbibed his spirit; in habit you are holy; in you, sin cannot reign. But I will say, resist temptation;

banish the evil thought; strangle the incipient lust--the infant principle of sin; crush the young serpent's head before his sting can have strength to dart the moral poison. Forswear the accommodating and supple spirit which is so apt to lure the Christian into worldly compliances. Remember that you are redeemed to be a holy seed. Let not the Redeemer be reproached in the bosom of his own family.

"He hath suffered to bring you to God!" to establish for you a communion with the Father of your spirit here, that you may be trained up for the holy fellowship of Heaven. Draw near, therefore, in full assurance of faith. Lift up pure hearts and holy hands. In private and in publick;

in the closet, the dwelling, and the church; let the altar of incense be raised, and pure offerings of praise and thanksgiving ascend. And if it be only through the suffering of Christ that you are brought into peace with God, and receive the privilege of approaching him acceptably, there is no need of many words to prove that you must draw near in his name and in dependence upon his merits. "He is the way, and no man cometh unto the Father, but by him."*

One word to unthinking sinners, and I have done. If no man can be brought to God but by a suffering mediator-if no man can appear before God's face in Heaven, except through the righteousness of that mediator, imputed to him, and received by faith; and on this point you have a full and fair opportunity to satisfy yourselves by collating the different scriptures on this subject, and inferring effects from causes-conclusions from premises; what madness possesses you, that you should renounce your only refuge? I entreat you to pause. Surely you are not aware of the bitterness of God's eternal displeasure. If sin required such an ex-. piation as was made for it by the unequalled suffering of the Son of God, surely, they whom faith and repentance have not interested in his merits, must acknowledge themselves to be in imminent and. awful peril. "If such things were done in a green tree, what shall be done in a dry.?" Luke, xxii 31,

John, xiv. 6.

SERMON XXII.

THE FEAR OF MAN SUBORDINATE TO THE FEAR OF GOD.

ST. MATTHEW, X. 28.

"Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”.

To know equally the chief good and the chief ill; to have

distinct views of what we should most dread and what we should most desire; is a useful, and cannot but be an all-important acquisition. It is attainable at the feet of Jesus Christ. He has told us that the happiness of man consists in the knowledge of God; in divine love; and in the everlasting enjoyment of heavenly communion. He has told us, also, as in our text, that the misery of man consists in the eternal privation of these joys, and the eternal sufferings of a torment infinitely more to be deprecated than the pains of this life, however severe, and the terrors of death however alarming. The holy confessors and martyrs of God have studied this lesson in all ages, and at all times it is a lesson worthy of Christian meditation. Exempt, as we are, for the present, from the lash of persecution, there are few who are not impressed with greater anxiety on the score of temporal evils, than apprehension as to what are eternal; few who do not dread weak men more than the Almighty God; and none who do not need instruction from Heaven' as to whom and what they ought, and whom and what they ought

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