justifying faith, for which you inquire; that of which all Scripture, all experience, all living believers, all dying saints, all blessed martyrs, all pardoned sinners tell. Now this act is not comprised in a single thought, a single desire, a single word, but it consists in a state of mind, of affections, of heart. That state which the Holy Spirit alone can work, and which, where his Divine influences are sincerely sought, he will work in any fallen, corrupt, polluted child of fallen Adam; that state which enables you to leave all for Christ, to seek all from Christ, and to find all, and more than all, in Christ.

Brethren, is this your state at the present moment? Can you say, from your heart, There is no sin, no pleasure, no profit, no feeling which I would not willingly sacrifice, and desire to sacrifice, for Christ's sake, if God require it? There is no act, no thought, no word, no righteousness of mine, with which, in the way of merit, I would desire to approach God; "my best is nothing worth," all are vile, all are polluted, all are deserving rather of punishment for their short-coming, than of reward for their merits. I, therefore, give up all, I renounce all, I abhor all, if put in competition with what my Saviour and Redeemer has done and suffered for me; to that and to that alone I look; my only hope, my only solace, my only and all-sufficient Saviour, is Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages.

Then, brethren, this, as regards each individual among you, so thinking and so acting, is the name whereby God at this moment calls the Divine, the Eternal Son, "the Lord your Righteousness." This is that justifying faith. which makes you one with God, and God with you; this is that state of heart and affections, which all preaching, all reading, all meditation, all sacraments, all prayer, are intended instrumentally to produce, or to build up, or

to establish. We ask nothing more for you and for ourselves, than that this may be, not a momentary impulse strongly affecting the mind, not like a cloud across the sun, changing its appearance for a moment, and then passing away for ever, but the abiding, settled, habitual posture of our affections and thoughts; enabling us to say, not once, but for ever, "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,"-" not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith."

With these feelings, to you "to live will be Christ, and to die will be gain," your life will be holy, your death peaceful, your end glorious. He whom you have loved and worshipped and obeyed, will be "the Lord your Righteousness" now, the Lord your everlasting joy, and your infinite happiness, in the kingdom of his Father.

SERMON XI.

CONFESSING CHRIST.

MATTHEW X. 32, 33.

Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

THERE is something peculiarly great and ennobling in true Christianity. It refines the feelings, elevates the heart, dignifies the manners, while it converts and saves the soul. So strikingly is this the case, that it is a common observation of those who have enjoyed the largest intercourse with the religious poor, that they could in almost all cases rightly pronounce, merely from externals, whether the inmates of a cottage have been really brought into the household and family of Christ Jesus our Lord. No doubt the first great cause of this is, that the moment the heart comes under the influence of Divine grace, it is opened to the action of a multitude of thoughts and impressions of a far higher nature than have ever yet been brought to bear upon it; and while exercised in these, it necessarily escapes from much of the dross and dust and pollution of that lower world in which it has been, hitherto, wholly occupied; it becomes conversant

with subjects as entirely above the comprehension of the highest created intelligence, as they are above its own; it lives much in the contemplation of the eternal; it unites daily, not only with the wisest and noblest and best of men in their thoughts and prayers and meditations, but it goes higher still; it has one subject and one feeling and one song with angels and archangels, and with all the host of heaven, while they laud and magnify God's glorious name. These things must inevitably elevate and adorn while they correct and sanctify; and the widest and longest experience fully proves that they do so. But there is yet another, and though a lower, still unquestionably a very influential promoter of the same great effects. This is to be found even in the manner in which, in the revealed Word, the religion of Jesus is proposed to us. There is nothing low, nothing mean, nothing pitiful, nothing clandestine, to be met with throughout the whole of the revelation of Christ. All is grand and open and noble; the motives of the Gospel are all as honest and sincere as they are pure and uncontaminated; the precepts of the Gospel are all as distinct and unambiguous as they are lovely and of good report; the policy of the Gospel is all as straightforward, bold, and transparent, as it is holy, good, and wise. Perhaps there is nothing which so completely characterizes, and at the same time identifies the religion of Jesus Christ as this; nothing which draws so decisive a line between it and every false religion; and, more than this, between it and every adulterated religion, every human modification of the true.

It would not be difficult to find a thousand examples to illustrate these observations, but we will content ourselves with the corroboration they receive from the single injunction of the text! Consider for a moment the cir

cumstances under which it was delivered, the time when it was first so strongly enforced, and you cannot but acknowledge, that if it stood alone, it is so entirely adverse to the dictates of a carnal policy, so completely contrary to what man would term the interest of the faith to which it refers, that to every unprejudiced mind, while it powerfully corroborates the truths to which I have just adverted of the ennobling character of the Gospel, it cannot but form a strong additional proof of the Divine origin of a religion which would voluntarily subject itself to such a test. The Jews had just before passed a law that whosoever should confess Christ to be the Messiah, should be "put out of the synagogue;" in other words, should be excommunicated, the heaviest punishment they were, at that period of their history, empowered legally to inflict. The Gentiles would, as the omniscient Saviour perfectly foreknew, soon establish an ordinance, that he who should dare to confess Christ should be thrown to the wild beasts, or carried to the stake. All human probability, therefore, of the spread of Christianity, would seem to rest upon the fact, during its infancy, of its quiet, silent, unobtrusive progress, and this to depend upon the great tact and management in the mode in which it was promulgated, to rely almost for its existence on the judicious reserve which its followers should evince in preaching the peculiar truths of the Gospel; and that therefore not merely its prosperity, but, as I have said before, its very existence, would depend upon the concealment and secrecy of its few and timid and powerless followers. It was in the very face of all these opposing circumstances, in contradiction to every dictate of human policy and worldly expediency, that our Lord delivered the declaration of the text, "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I