abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."

The result then of the whole Article is this, that as by the sin of the first Adam all men fell, and the nature of all men became corrupt, "so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation;" so through the atoning sacrifice of the second Adam, all "that believe and are baptized," are freed from condemnation, and are made particulars of everlasting life.

And now, brethren, were we to conclude here, although perhaps we might hope that we had explained the Article. before us, and shown its perfect accordance with the declarations of Omnipotence; nay, more, though we might venture to trust that most of our hearers would acquiesce in the conclusions at which we have arrived, still not a single individual might carry away from this house of prayer a deeper conviction of his own lost and ruined state by nature, and of his own actual sinfulness and unprofitableness. Yet this is the point, which, if it be not effected, would leave all our declarations of general sinfulness merely "as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."

How difficult, how utterly impossible is it for any human teacher to produce this conviction of sin: we may convince the mind, but it is God alone who can convince the conscience and really reach the heart. May that blessed Being, even God the Holy Ghost, whose peculiar prerogative it is thus to convince of sin, send home this day the arrow of conviction to the hearts of some who have hitherto, from very carelessness and thoughtlessness, escaped all personal application of this most humbling doctrine.

We will not occupy your time by supposing that we address gross and outward sinners, persons living in the com

Rom. v. 19, 20, 21.

mission of profaneness, of impiety, of adultery, of fornication, or of any of those works of darkness, which, though hidden from the eye of man, are, as the Word of God assures us, all written "in the light of God's countenance," all prepared against that great and coming day, when men shall need no other accusers than these, and no other witnesses, to strike them speechless, and to testify to the justice of their condemnation. To such it is unnecessary to speak: we would rather address ourselves to the moral, and the upright, and the amiable; you who have filled, and are filling, the differ ent relationships of life in the most irreproachable and unexceptionable manner, and its duties with so much honour and equity, that even your enemies, if you have any, are compelled, like Pilate of old, to say, "I find no fault in this man.'

99

It is to you especially that we speak, when we declare, that all which we have this day advanced of the sinfulness and corruption of our nature, and of the entire absence of original righteousness, applies as distinctly and as completely to yourself, be your rank and station what they may, as to the guiltiest and the most abandoned of your fellow-sinners. All the virtues upon which you pride yourself will not, in any, the slightest degree, avail you, as proving that you are an exception to the general rule of a fallen nature, a corrupt and sinful heart, a mind alienated from God and His righteousness, which is the lot of every child of Adam. Your virtues may exist; we do not in the least desire to deny it, we do not wish even to underrate them; the fall of Adam did not destroy them, it left much, very much of amiability, and kindness, and honour, and integrity, in the corrupt and guilty heart; there they lie, like the beautiful fragments of some fair column, each fair and lovely in itself, yet each a ruin, and were all collected, forming but a ruin still. The column which was shattered to atoms by the fall of Adam, was the holiness of our nature, its purity, and piety, its love to God, and likeness to His image, and conformity to His will.

These in the natural heart, have all disappeared, and those moral virtues, of kindness to your friends, and affection to your family, and honour and integrity to all, in which you are rejoicing, are merely like the leaves of the capital of the column, which are here and there scattered amidst the ruin of the mass, undestroyed indeed, but, as regards the column. in its present state, utterly useless. Put them all together, and you could not re-erect the shattered pillar, no not one single foot of it; all that you could gather up would be but these mere ornamental appendages, which, detached from the shaft on which they grew, are as worthless as they are fair and frail. To convince you of sin, therefore, we would not inquire into the duties of the second table of God's commands, easy as it might, perhaps, be to convict you even there, of unworthy motives, amidst your proudest virtues; but we would urge you to try yourself by the duties of the first table, your allegiance to God.

God demands your whole heart; He requires truth in the inward parts; purity in the imagination and thoughts. How will you answer when tried by such a standard? Are there no thoughts admitted into your hearts, and entertained there, which are dishonourable to God, injurious to your neighbour, disgraceful to yourself? Have you no thought there which you would scruple to declare, even before this assembly of sinners like yourself? Would you have no objection to repeat aloud before all here present, every vain and foolish and wicked imagination which has occupied your mind since you arose this morning, or even since you entered these doors? How much more need you then to be ashamed before a perfectly pure and holy God. Not to speak of proud, covetous, vain, ambitious, wanton thoughts, how many thoughts of unthankfulness for the mercies of God, of impatience under His trials, of repinings under His Providences, of disregard and forgetfulness of Himself. Are you free from these things? Does a single day ever pass over you without, we will not say one such sinful imagination,

but without many such, breaking in upon you, and carrying you away captive almost before you are sensible of their attack. If this be the case, and if you have lived twenty, thirty, or forty years in this world of sin, who can tell the length of that dark scroll written within and without, with guilty thoughts, unprofitable words, and unholy actions, which no eye but God's has seen, and no hand but His has registered?

Again, God commands that "all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father."* Have you through life fulfilled this great and obvious duty? Have you loved the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength? Have you dwelt upon the great things He has done and suffered for you, till your soul has been filled with the deepest gratitude, and your heart with the most obedient, self-denying love? Have you hated, and endeavoured to renounce, all sin, remembering what it cost this adorable Saviour to redeem your souls? Alas! who can come forth acquitted-who can pass unscathed through such an ordeal? Who will not, if he know his heart, be obliged to confess, "Here, O my God, I stand utterly condemned; I have no word to speak, no cause to show why judgment should not be passed on me." What is the result, then, at which we arrive? Is it not this, that were there no scriptural foundation for the truths of which we have this day spoken; were the whole doctrine of "original, or birth sin," blotted from the Bible, our case at least, as sinners before God, would not be in any, the slightest degree, improved or altered by it; there would still remain sufficient, fully sufficient in the lives and in the hearts, even of the best among us, to sink us to perdition. How strange then is it, that men deny this doctrine, and dispute, and cavil, and contest it, as if, could they once get rid of this, they should stand acquitted before God; while, if they knew their own hearts, they would admit that

John v. 23.

of all those wretched beings who have now commenced an éternity of wo, there is not an individual who has not merited and obtained his sad pre-eminence in misery, by his own neglect of the Saviour, his own continuance in sin, his own' apostasy from God.

May the review of these great truths send each of us to his own heart in serious, earnest self-examination:-Am I a sinner by nature and by practice? Am I convinced, with the Apostle of old, that "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing;"* and do I in consequence "abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes?Ӡ

Be assured, brethren, there is not one soul among us who can answer these inquiries as the Word of God would have us answer them, who shall not, in God's good time, if he approach Him through the blood of His dear Son, if he seek repentance and pardon, as His gifts, through the atoning merits and everliving intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ, shortly hear those blessed words, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."

DISCOURSE II.

JOHN vi. 44.

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.

THE tenth Article of our church, to which we are to apply ourselves this morning, is, perhaps, among the most difficult that we shall meet with throughout the whole of the inquiry in which we are engaged. Let us then approach it in a spirit of true humility, not expecting to find that subject plain and

*Rom. vii. 18.

† Job xlii. 6.

Isa. xliii. 25.