contend that our belief is beyond our control, that faith is not voluntary, and unbelief is therefore not criminal: forgetting, that, though a gift of God, faith is withal an act or habit of the human mind; that, like every other virtue, it is on the one hand, a boon of heaven, and on the other, the exercise of unfettered human agency that it is the natural result of evidence duly and impartially considered, and that no man can be guiltless who wilfully turns away from the contemplation of that evidence. The religion of God asks but a verdict according to the weight of proof which she brings. To prevent the admission of that evidence, or wilfully to pronounce a decision against its weighty and sufficient testimony, would not be deemed guiltless in any cause that should be brought before an earthly tribunal; nor shall it be held a venial offence at the bar, and by the laws of an insulted Deity.

From the errors which human perverseness has invented to obscure the character of faith, we turn to review its true nature and office. It is most simple, as much so as the confidence of a prattling child in his father's kindness and wisdom; yet at the same time as expansive in its views, as the loftiest science that ever tasked the powers of a created intellect. It is but a hearty assent to the whole testimony of God

a submission of the entire soul, not of the intellect only, but also of the affections and the imagination, to the testimony of God; whether that testimony be employed in prescribing a duty, or in establishing a privilege. It is the acknowledgment of human ignorance, united with the profession of confidence in Divine wisdom, and of subjection to Divine authority. Making no reservations, prescribing no terms of limitation, claiming no power of revoking or abridging its grant, it is a surrender of the intelligent spirit to the word of God as its rule and its stay; in conformity to it as the one standard of human conduct, and in dependence upon it as the only fitting nutriment of the spiritual life. It thus restores again the communication which at the fall was severed. In his temptation Satan persuaded our parents to discredit the testimony of God; and the consequent interruption of faith was the hewing away of that channel, through which they had heretofore received from their God knowledge, truth, and love. The human mind became at once an exhausted and rifted reservoir, "a broken cistern," into which no longer welled the outgushing streams from "the Fountain of living waters." By faith the communion is restored, and man is again the dependant and pupil of his God.

It is his natural and rightful state, not for this life only, but forever. The apostle, when enumerating the graces that abide, has spoken of faith as if it too continued. Indeed, the very nature of a created and limited intelligence, involves the necessity of continued faith. Long as we are not omnipresent, and cannot perceive with our own eyes what is every where transacted—long as we are not omniscient, and there are portions of knowledge, which we have not yet acquired long as man is not invested with the attributes of the Deity, so long must we depend upon His testimony for the truth of that which He has seen and we have not seen; so long must we learn from Him the nature of that which He has known, but which we may know only from his words. The perfection of the heavenly world does not imply illimitable knowledge, either as to the present or the future; and as to all those portions of God's ways, which thus remain concealed from our personal examination, the spirits of just men made perfect, will, with their first-born brethren, the angels that have kept their original estate, remain the pensioners of faith, dependent upon the declarations of God for continual instruction.

And how glorious are the objects which faith brings into the mind of man, even during his sojourn here. He learns from her the secret of his own misery and guiltiness, and its remedy. He is told of a law condemning irrevocably for the first offence, yet now fully satisfied for his hourly infraction of its precepts a Saviour divine to redeem and human to compassionate a salvation not of his own procurement the Spirit of God descended to be his teacher and consolertroubles sanctified - snares broken and an eternity of purity and blessedness made his certain inheritance; and are not these truths of surpassing splendor and inestimable worth? They enter into the soul, not so much destroying as be-dwarfing its former ideas, and the original furniture of the mind, which it has obtained from the knowledge and literature of this world. Faith has suddenly widened the mental horizon, letting in the vision of realities before present, but hitherto unseen. Or rather, as has been beautifully said, it is the floating into view of another and a lovelier world, with its glories and its harmony drowning the din and beclouding the splendor of these terrestrial scenes.

The believer judges by a new standard; sees by a new and heaven-descended light; and lo, in the change, "all things

have become new." And though the men of this world may question and deride the renovation, because the man's earthly condition, and the powers of his mind remain apparently the same; it is evident to those who will reason, that the man is essentially renewed; for his views, his feelings, his hopes and fears, his prospects and his purposes, his conduct and language, have undergone a marked and strange modification. True it is, the man's garb is still coarse, and his person ungainly, and his mind is not graced with the refinements and adornments of education; but the change is as yet merely initial. Death and the resurrection shall consummate it. And even already the internal process is to his own mind alike evident and delightful; and with tears of gratitude he receives it as the earnest of that thorough renovation, which shall transform him, body, soul, and spirit, into the likeness of his Lord. Thus might we imagine an aged and lonely cottager, musing at nightfall in his desolate home, upon the partner of his bosom, now tenanting the grave, and his children, who have long since wandered from his hearth to a distant land, and are there regardless or ignorant of the sorrows with which his declining years are darkened. And as he cowers over his scanty fire, the unbidden tear will fall, and his heart is full of the bitterness of despair. But enter with the unexpected tidings that his children live; that, prospered and wealthy, they are yet affectionate; that their hearts still yearn towards their early home and the parent who holds it; that they are even now on their way to soothe and gladden his few remaining days: and although you have made no immediate change in the man's lot—although the hovel is yet dark and cold, and the embers emit but the same dull and saddening light; the whole scene is changed to his eyes, and instead of its former desolateness, it has become radiant with the lustre of his new-found happiness. A new element is poured into his mind, and the faith of your message has changed his whole soul. Is there no reality, no enjoyment in this translation from despondency to hope, from comfortless and unpitied helplessness to the glad expectation of attached and watchful children? Yes; let his lot remain long but what it had been, he feels, and you cannot but feel, that the credence given to your tidings has renewed his youth within him, and thrown a new coloring over the whole scene of squalid poverty that surrounds him. And, if you deny not the reality of the happiness because of the absence or present

delay of any outward change, should you dispute the reality of the believer's peace, because as yet he is but the expec tant heir, and not the joyous possessor, of a heavenly mansion?

Of a principle thus efficient and delightful, what shall secure the preservation and increase? Divine truth is its aliment, and the Holy Spirit its author and upholder. In the language of scripture it will be observed that the term faith, (as in the instance of the exhortation to contend earnestly for it, as it was once delivered to the saints,) is employed not only in the sense above given, but also to describe a system of doctrines; but it is as the food of that spiritual principle which we have endeavored to describe. And as the principle of life, and the mode or means by which it is sustained, may be, and, in common speech, often are confounded; so is the same word used in the New Testament to signify both the truth received, and the temper or habit of mind receiving it. But the two dissimilar ideas are not to be blended; nor are we to suppose that the form of sound doctrine will necessarily insure a living faith in the heart. The experiment, often and anxiously repeated, has ever failed. Creeds and confessions have been adjusted and balanced with the utmost nicety of discrimination, and with the greatest precision of language. But in the church at Geneva, planted and watered by the cares of Calvin and Beza, and in the English Presbyterians, the descendants of the holy non-conformists, it has been but too fully proved, that correct symbols of faith may be inherited from a pious ancestry and for a time be retained with great reverence, but without any portion of the indwelling spirit which once framed and pervaded them. Indeed, in the history of Protestant Germany, it has been found that the fallen and corrupted fragments of a traditionary "form of sound words," have been most prolific in the production of heresies, alike strange and revolting. The fat and heavy soil of an inert and "dead orthodoxy," was to that national church the hot-bed of skepticism, nurturing errors of the rankest growth, and the most deadly nature. The stubble, which had well sustained the former and the proper harvest, but served to enrich the field for an after growth of weeds the most noxious and luxuriant. However useful in its place, (and, properly employed, its usefulness is great,) the most correct and scriptural creed is but the outward and inanimate portraiture of an inward and living faith; and it is as idle to expect that con

fessions and symbols, alone and unaided, should create faith, as to imagine that a definition of honesty and benevolence, rigid and accurate, should of itself be sufficient to reform the inmates of our prisons.

"Leviathan is not so tamed."

It is not with such weapons that the enemy is to be vanquished, or a living faith perpetuated from age to age. The affections, no less than the intellect, must be reached and won. The continual interposition of the Holy Spirit, the renewed and personal application of truth to the human conscience, are requisite to attain the end. And it is only from a personal faith, in all her members, thus produced — thus fostered - - and continually increasing, that the church can expect prosperity. It is thus that she is to be prepared for conflict with her internal foes, and for the subjugation of new territories to the obedience of the cross. From a faith thus established and made general, what may not be hopedwhat conquest shall seem too arduous, and what peril too fearful?

We have seen the dignity of faith and its simplicity; the errors which misrepresent and assail it; its nature; the magnificence of its effects; its necessity and eternity; and the mode of its preservation. It remains now to examine,

II. THE INTIMATE CONNEXION EXISTING BETWEEN THIS FAITH AND THE MISSIONARY EFFORTS OF THE CHURCH.

Having observed that this principle is the source of knowledge, and the parent of motives and feelings to the Christian, it is at once evident that the largeness or the narrowness of the knowledge thus gained, the weakness or the strength of the feelings thus excited, and of the motives which are in this mode implanted, will constantly affect the character of all the Christian's doings, but especially those which depend most upon faith for their inception and completion-his doings in behalf of his impenitent fellow-men.

Upon the enterprises of the church, it is immediately apparent, whether the faith of the believers who compose that body is in a state of feebleness and declension, or of energy and growth. He who looks much to the parting commandment of his Lord for the universal proclamation of his truth, and much to the repeated assurance of his Lord that his truth shall prove itself mighty, and his word not return void, will