that inward monitor, which knows and declares the will of God; and thus, instead of advancing in the path of light is gradually sinking deeper into darkness, great and awful is his danger. This it is to find the dreadful consummation expressed in those words of the apostle, "It were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them."

To those whose minds are thus irresolute and thus undecided; to those whose convictions and whose prepossessions are in favour of the truth of Christianity, let us hold up the example of the apostle Paul, as he thus held himself up for the example of his hearers. Would to God that each of us were both almost and altogether such as he was so deeply convinced of the truth of the gospel, and so affectionately engaged in its adoption and its practice. He had left all and followed Christ: he had consecrated all the powers, both of his body, and his mind, to the service of Christ. His was no scanty measure of affection and exertion, as neither were his convictions unsatisfactory, nor his resolution wavering. He hesitated not, from fear or from interest, to declare himself the servant of Christ, and to accept the commission to bear his name among the Gentiles, to bring others to the same knowledge of the truth. The energy, the decision, the

earnestness of St. Paul we must imitate. The devotion to Christ, the zeal for his service, the active holiness of heart and life which he cultivated, we must also seek to acquire for ourselves. Like him, whatever be our attainments in grace, and holiness, and knowledge, we must forget what is behind, and reach forward to still higher excellence we must press toward the mark for the prize of our high calling. We say not that none are altogether Christians, till they have arrived at the full measure of the stature of Christ: we say not that even the most advanced amongst us will not still have to lament and deplore weaknesses and infirmities, and still come short of the great standard of christian perfection: but we do say that he who is content to be almost a Christian, is lamentably deficient in the very first principles of the faith, and far removed from the hopes of godliness. Ye that are almost persuaded to adopt the faith of the gospel, in its hopes and its requirements, and yet while you know that you have no other means of escape, are still undecided and irresolute, will it be sufficient for you at the last day, to have almost escaped the danger of your sins, to have almost attained the blessedness of heaven? Think what bitterness of anguish and disappointment this thought involves. Seek no longer to stifle your convictions: be not content to confess Christianity as true, to approve it as excellent, to

admire it as sublime; but love it as the means of your renewal unto godliness, cherish it as the guide of your affections and your lives; value it as the charter of your everlasting hopes. Be not almost but altogether Christians, by the grace of God; and he who begins the good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Let not your faith be merely a speculative principle, a barren conviction; "but add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness charity."

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SERMON XVIII.

THE GUILT AND PUNISHMENT OF ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA.

ACTS v. 3-5.

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost? thou hast not lied unto men but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

THE holy scriptures furnish us with many most awful examples of the retributive justice of God, in the sudden and immediate infliction of punishment upon transgressors. That God is a God of mercy, and willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live, is a truth written indelibly on the pages of revelation; and even in the very record of his most awful judgments, we may still recognize this truth. Terrible as the infliction of judgment may have been to the persons themselves,

there is to be found in all the transactions to which we allude, an immediate purpose of promoting the general benefit, a distinct end and aim in all the details of those occurrences, to show that God is greatly to be feared, and to be had in reverence by all those that are round about him. And this truth is exemplified, not merely by the solemn visitations upon ungodly nations, or that most solemn of all visitations, the destruction of the whole world by the flood; but by numberless instances of individual punishment, inflicted by the evident interposition of God; and showing most remarkably, that not only national sins, and the general profligacy of men are the objects of divine wrath, and of divine punishment; but that no individual is too obscure to escape his observation, and no sin too trifling, or rather, we ought to say, so apparently insignificant in its extent or consequences, as to be less an object of his great displeasure.

Under the Mosaic dispensation, the system of government, which invested Jehovah with the direct administration of the law which he had promulgated, naturally occasioned the infliction of temporal punishment upon the transgressors of that law, by the open interference of the supreme governor of his people. Transgression involved, not only a violation of religious obligations, but of political allegiance. Sin against God was treason against the ruler of Israel: and