down in a dungeon which another has made, has not such cause to bewail himself, as he who sits down in the dungeon which he has thus made for himself. Poverty and destitution are sad things; but there is no such poverty, there is no such destitution, as that of a covetous and worldly heart. Poverty is a sad thing, but there is no man so poor, as he who is poor in his affections and virtues. Many a house is full, where the mind is unfurnished and the heart is empty; and no hovel of mere penury ever ought to be so sad as that house. Behold, it is left desolate; to the immortal it is left desolate, as the chambers of death. Death is there indeed; and it is the death of the soul!

But not to dwell longer upon particular forms of evil; of what, let us ask, is the man guilty? Who is it that is thus guilty? To say that he is noble in his nature, has been sometimes thought a dangerous laxity of doctrine, a proud assumption of merit, "a flattering unction" laid to the soul. But what kind of flattery is it, to say to a man, you were made but little lower than the angels; you might have been rising to the state of angels; and you have madewhat have you made yourself? What you are; a slave to the world; a slave to sense; a slave to masters baser than nature made them, to vitiated sense, and a corrupt and vain world!" Alas! the irony implied in such flattery as this, is not needed to add poignancy to conviction. Boundless capacities shrunk to worse than infantile imbecility! immortal faculties made toilers for the vanities of a moment! a glorious nature sunk to a willing fellowship with evil!-it needs no exaggeration, but only simple statement, to make this a sad and afflicting case. Ill enough had it been for us if we had been made a depraved and degraded Well might the world even then, have sat down

race.

in sackcloth and sorrow; though repentance properly have made no part of its sorrow. But it indeed, if we have made ourselves the sinful unhappy beings that we are; if we have given selves the wounds, which have brought languishr and debility and distress upon us! What keen re and remorse would any one of us feel, if in a fi passion, he had destroyed his own right arm, or planted in it a lingering wound! And yet this, this last especially, is what every offender does to so faculty of his nature.

But this is not all. Ill enough had it been for us we had wrought out evil from nothing; if from nature negative and indifferent to the result, we ha brought forth the fruits of guilt and misery. But if w have wronged, if we have wrested from its true bia a nature made for heavenly ends; if it was all beaut ful in God's design and in our capacity, and we hav made it all base, so that human nature, alas ! is but the by-word of the satirist, and a mark for the scorner; i affections that might have been sweet and pure almost as the thoughts of angels, have been soured and embittered and turned to wrath, even in the homes of human kindness; if the very senses have been brutalized and degraded, and changed from ministers of pleasure to inflictors of pain; and yet more, if all the dread authority of reason has been denied, and all the sublime sanctity of conscience has been set at naught in this downward course; and yet once more, if all these things, not chimerical, not visionary, are actually witnessed, are matters of history, in ten thousand dwellings, around us; ah! if they are actually existing, my brethren, in you and in me !—and finally, if uniting together, these causes of depravation have spread a flood of misery over the world, and there

and sighings and tears in all the habitaen, all proceeding from this one cause; , shall penitence be thought a strange and emotion? Shall it be thought strange st great demand of the Gospel, should be ace? Shall it be thought strange that a sit down and weep bitterly for his sins; hat his acquaintances shall ask, "what e?" or shall conclude that he is going mad ism, or is on the point of losing his reason? he dread infatuation is on the part of those not? It is the negligent world, that is d frantic in the pursuit of unholy indulunsatisfying pleasures. It is such a world weep over its sins and miseries, that is nged. Repentance, my brethren, shall it a virtue difficult of exercise? What can the v for, if not for the cause of all sorrow? awaken grief, if not guilt and shame? 1 the human heart pour out its tears, if not esolations which have been of its own

- is it written, and in language none too t "the sacrifices of God are a broken and art." And how encouragingly is it written oken and contrite heart, thou wilt not deh! Israel," saith again the sacred word, ! thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is

found."

IV.

ON THE ADAPTATION WHICH RELIGION, TO BE 1 AND USEFUL, SHOULD HAVE TO HUMAN NATU

A BRUISED REED SHALL HE NOT BREAK, AND THE SMOKING FLAX SHAI NOT QUENCH.-Isaiah xlii. 3.

THIS was spoken by prophecy of our Saviour, a is commonly considered as one of the many passag which either prefigure or describe, the considerate a gracious adaptation of his religion, to the wants a weaknesses of human nature. This adaptation Christianity to the wants of the mind, is, indeed topic that has been much, and very justly insisted o as an evidence of its truth.

I wish however, in the present discourse, to plac this subject before you in a light somewhat different perhaps, from that in which it has usually been viewed If Christianity is suited to the wants of our nature, i is proper to consider what our nature needs. I shall therefore in the following discourse, give considerable prominence to this inquiry. The wants of our nature are various. I shall undertake to show in several respects, what a religion that is adapted to these wants, should be. In the same connection, I shall undertake to show that Christianity is such a religion.

This course of inquiry, I believe, will elicit some just views of religious truth, and will enable us to judge whether our own views of it are just. My object in it, is to present some temperate and comprehen

sive views of religion, which shall be seen at once to meet the necessities of our nature, and to accord with the spirit of the Christian religion.

Nothing, it would seem, could be more obvious, than that a religion for human beings, should be suited to human beings; not to angels, nor to demons; not to a fictitious order of creatures; not to the inhabitants of some other world; but to men—to men of this world, of this state and situation in which we are placed, of this nature which is given us; to men, with all their passions and affections warm and alive, and all their weaknesses and wants and fears, about them. And yet evident and reasonable as all this is, nothing has been more common, than for religion to fail of this very adaptation. Sometimes, it has been made a quality all softness, all mercy and gentleness; something joyous and cheering, light and easy, as if it were designed for angels. At others, it has been clothed with features as dark and malignant, as if it belonged to fiends rather than to men. In no remote period, it has laid penances on men; as if their sinews and nerves were like the mails of steel, which they wore in those days. While the same religion, with strange inconsistency, lifted up the reins to their passions, as if it had been the age of Stoicism, instead of being the age of Chivalry. Alas! how little has there been in the religions of past ages; how little in the prevalent forms even of the Christian religion, to draw out, to expand and brighten, the noble faculties of our nature! How many of the beautiful fruits of human affection, have withered away under the cold and blighting touch of a scholastic and stern theology! How many fountains of joy in the human heart have been sealed and closed up for ever, by the iron hand of a gloomy superstition! How many bright spirits, how