teach us greatly more than is commonly imagined, in the advancement of our enduring nature, and our preparation for immortality. Moreover, that account of the new creation which we judge to be given on insufficient data, carries with it a current of human feelings and inclinations, to bias the judgment of those who receive it in deciphering their own experience. If it be assumed that the more sudden and palpable is the change which takes place in the mind of an individual when he repents of sin, and embraces, in sincerity and thankfulness, the overtures of the Gospel, the more decisive is the proof of his being "in Christ," "a new creature," it follows that the Christian who believes himself to be the subject of such a change, will find that remorse and dread of the divine displeasure which might otherwise have punished his neglect of the Gospel in past time, to be overpowered and lost in his certain assurance of the mercy of God, and his meetness for the life to come. Can we wonder, then, that when persons are powerfully, and, to all appearance, effectually impressed with the truths of religion, they should so readily believe that they have never, in the smallest degree, experienced such impressions before; never felt

an uneasiness and weight in the apprehension of their guilt before God; never breathed an earnest prayer for his forgiveness and guidance; never performed a single act from a sincerely religious motive;-that, during the whole of their past lives, they have felt no touching impressions of the goodness and mercy of God, no real concern to obtain his approval and blessing-in a word, no approaches to the present state of their minds, no symptoms of amendment preceding their sense of spiritual health and restoration? We must surely have observed human nature somewhat more closely than to accept such a statement as necessarily and literally true; though we may not for a moment doubt the conscientiousness, the moral truth with which it is laid before us.*

* The opinion here disputed, it should be remarked, is materially supported by the notion that there is no distinction between a deficiency and a destitution of religion in those who fail of acceptable obedience to God. In other attributes of mind, other principles of action, we readily admit this distinction. Thus, although we are not accustomed to describe a person as honest, or temperate, or benevolent, who is not habitually or characteristically honest, or temperate, or benevolent; yet we do not deny him to be occasionally, or to a certain extent, capable of honesty, or temperance, or benevolence. But if the conduct of an individual be not habitually such as to entitle him to be described as religious, there are many who suppose him to

The practical effects of that opinion which we have sought to disprove, have often been the subject of regretful observation. Its influence, generally, can hardly be otherwise than unfavourable to the cultivation of religion, if, as we have particularly argued, it keeps out of sight the aggravated sinfulness of ungoverned passions and an unholy life in connexion with the knowledge and institutions of Christianity. Its tendency, however, is more directly pernicious: it counteracts and tends to frustrate, in one most important instance, the great aim of religious instruction. That aim, consistently with all Scripture, is

be destitute of religion altogether. The supposition, we conceive, however well it may square with a particular system of doctrines, is ill supported by the testimony of experience, or the representations of Scripture. We must be contented, however, to refer to the language of our Saviour to the individual who inquired of him what he should do to inherit eternal life. (Mark x. 21.) " One thing thou lackest." Does such language infer that that individual lacked every thing ?-that he was entirely devoid of the dispositions required in the service of God?-or does it imply that he had made some progress in religion, but failed of that determined, unreserved obedience which Christ demands from his disciples, and less than which he will not deign to acknowledge? It is customary, we may add, to speak of decision and perseverance in religion; but with what propriety, unless our piety may be merely partial and occasional-may be deficient in degree?

to induce an immediate, continual, and persevering application of the mind to the practice of religion, the duties of our Christian calling. Accordingly, it is customary, and of vital importance, to urge the power of habit in the formation of the character; to insist that every action which we perform reacts for good or evil on the principle from which it springs, and reflects a vigour on the better or worse part of our nature; that, on the one hand, every successful resistance to temptation reduces the power of that temptation over the mind, and that, on the other, as every act of intemperance has been said to tell upon the stamina of the physical frame, so every vicious and ungodly deed tells upon the moral constitution, and affects the probability of our final preparation for the last judgment: — consequently, that all the years, all the days, all the hours, of this our "accepted time," our space for repentance, our " day of salvation," are of essential use, uncounted value, and should be redeemed and husbanded to the great work of recovering the integrity, from which we have fallen, and answering the gracious purpose of God in our redemption. But how can such arguments take their just and full impression-how can they be other

wise than obscured in their evidence, clogged and impeded in their efficacy, by the prevalence of the opinion in question or any method of explaining the operation and progress of religion which savours of that opinion -the opinion that there is in the lives of all who are in reality renewed after the image of God, and qualified for the fruition of heaven, a particular occasion, a memorable period, when, through a special energy of the Divine Spirit, (for special it must be on such an assumption), the appointed means of human sanctification prove, for the first time, to be actually availing?-an auspicious moment, when the film which gathers on the mental eye from the disordered working of the passions is effectually removed, and the man, who was spiritually blind, sees-when the fetters of sin and Satan are broken, and the soul emancipated and regenerated for the acceptable service of God, and the successful pursuit of life everlasting?-Such an opinion, it must surely be allowed, supplies some pretext and apology to the general proneness to indolence and procrastination in religion; and, though its influence may be considerably counteracted in that variety of knowledge, and that mixture and contrariety of opinions, which, happily,