and enlarging the soul" in the way of his commandments."

We repeat, if a professor of the Gospel were devoid of a conviction that he was bound to the practice of holiness as inculcated by Christand his Apostles, his faith would be radically defective, even as an act of the understanding only, a state of the mere intellect; for what conclusion of his judgment-what portion of his creed would remain to be shown by works of goodness? That conviction, it is possible, in common with many other convictions, may have actually taken root in the mind, and be productive of its proper fruits in the life; and may, notwithstanding, be discarded in speculation, and even decried in words. A minister of one of the Reformed Churches, contemporary with Luther, in his affrighted eagerness to escape the heretical presumption of human merit in the sight of God, flew into the fanatical extreme of asserting that good works were not only defective in their nature, and not only unnecessary to salvation, but positively detrimental to the believer. Yet we are not informed that this wayward theologian was correspondingly solicitous to escape the personal defilement of good works; that his opinions and discourses destroyed the rectitude

of his own character; or that he approached so nearly to the condition of a maniac in any thing but speculation. But were a professor of the Christian religion in reality destitute of a conviction that he was bound and necessitated to the practice of holiness, he would want the form-the shadow of the faith which justifieth, to say nothing of its life-its substance. If the faith of a Christian be shown by upright and holy deeds, it is palpable that the individual who should expunge from his creed the duty and necessity of performing them, and be strictly an Antinomian in his principles, would be farther-immeasurably farther from a belief in Christ than the bulk of Pagans. He would be preeminently and emphatically an unbeliever. He would be scarcely less sowe speak considerately than an atheist; for the existence of God is not more plainly taught, or rather, not more obviously assumed, in the Scriptures, than the universal obligation of serving him, both in the offices of devotion, and in the practice of justice, temperance, purity, and benevolence.

So great, however, is the stress laid upon the necessity and efficacy of faith in the sacred writings-in other words, so often is that term employed, for reasons stated in the last dis

course, to comprehend the virtues which properly flow from a belief of the Gospel, that it is of the utmost importance to fix the attention on the practical operation of our faith to examine the quality and measure of that influence which it exerts upon our dispositions and conduct. St. James, therefore, admonishes us of a fact, as certain as it is humiliating and deplorable, that there may be a conviction of our duty as expounded in the precepts, and enforced in the doctrines of the Gospel-a conviction of our peculiar obligation to holiness as the objects of God's unbounded mercy, and the purchase of the humiliation and sufferings of our Redeemer, which, notwithstanding, may leave us habitually insensible to our debt of gratitude, or excite no earnest and persevering endeavours to discharge it. He warns us that there may be a belief of the Gospel, founded on an accurate perception of its import, as well as the evidences of its divine original, which, however, may win no consent from the affections, and work no subjection in the will; which may be wholly or comparatively powerless as an incentive to the love of God, and consequently to the fulfilment of his commandments;-a faith, it may be, fervent and active in opinion and controversy, but

cold and motionless as a principle of action; and he aims to disturb the satisfaction which any may derive from such a faith-to startle their security-to force them to quit with the speed of terror the treacherous footing on which they stand, as believers in Christ, and expectants of eternal life through his mediation.

The point which this Apostle so earnestly and, as we conceive, perspicuously urges, is, the inutility of yielding a merely theoretical assent to a religion, the scope of which is to control the passions, and determine the conduct of its professors. He exposes the vain and pernicious imagination that God will accept as a plea for justification, a faith which, though it dictates and enforces the practice of holiness, fails, in point of fact, to produce it; —a faith which, while it sets the Gospel before us as a means of moral purification, instructing us that "our Saviour Jesus Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,"* yet leaves the believer in bondage to depraved propensities; and instead of kindling his ardour in the cultivation of all piety and virtue, serves only to throw a stronger light on the

*Titus ii. 14.

selfish and worldly principles by which he is actuated. He insists on the lifelessness, the inanity of such a faith, as the instrument of our justification, be it held with whatever firmness, avowed with whatever intrepidity, or propagated with whatever zeal. Accordingly, he warns us that "a man is justified by works, and not by faith only;" and that "by works faith is made perfect." In other words, he warns us that works, or obedience to the precepts of the Gospel, is necessary, not, strictly speaking, to prove the reality of our faith, as some have explained his language, but to secure our justification: necessary to render our faith efficacious to justify us thereby instructing us that when faith is specified and demanded as the condition of our justification, it is assumed to be productive of works, or holiness of character; or which is the same thing-that the term faith imports not faith only, but those works. also which it is essential to our faith to inculcate, and, by the application of the most cogent and encouraging arguments, to enforce.

That we have offered a faithful exposition of the language of St. James, must be evident if we consider the terms in which he alludes to the faith of Abraham ;-an example by

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