without interfering with that faith and love and trust, which seem in the invisible world to be due to God only?" Then they would be told to look into the Scriptures, and see how God had said that He would Himself visit them, that He would Himself come to His temple, and redeem His people. This promise He had fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Let them not fear then to be guilty of idolatry in loving Christ with all their hearts, in believing in Him with an entire faith, in trusting Him with a perfect trust: they might safely honour the Son even as they honoured the Father; for that divine nature which in the Father was invisible and incomprehensible, veiled in light which no man can approach unto, was in the Son made manifest in our flesh, and so set forth before us that we could see, and hear, and feel, and understand. And this having become a familiar truth to the elders of Ephesus, they were nothing startled when Paul expressed it to them in the very strongest words which God has left recorded for us in His Scriptures, when he ventured to unite to their minds so closely and so vividly the notions of their Saviour Christ being both God and man, as to call them,-in language not elsewhere to be met with, in language which some unwise Christians were so afraid of, that they actually in many copies altered the very text to avoid

it, the overseers over the church of God, "which He had purchased with His own blood."

But now to come to the very words of the text itself. The substance of Christianity had been given in Paul's address to the synagogue at Antioch. It had been listened to with attention, and had so much interested some of those who heard it, that they besought that these words might be spoken to them the next sabbath. This is what often happens: it is the natural tribute either to the novelty and interest of any subject in itself, or to the ability and eloquence of him who has been speaking upon it. But the text goes on to say, that when the congregation was broken up, many still followed Paul and Barnabas, and that the apostles then spoke to them and persuaded, or rather tried to persuade, them to continue in the grace of God. Now this is the point which I wish us to dwell upon-this proof of the impression remaining after the congregation was broken up,—of men seeking to prolong that impression afterwards, and desiring to confirm and to increase that knowledge which they had gained within the walls of the synagogue. With what pleasure can we fancy the apostles to have observed these hearers of their word, who seemed to have heard it in such earnest. How gladly must they have talked with them,-entered into various

points more fully than was possible in any public address,―appealed to them in various ways which no one can touch upon who is speaking to a mixed multitude. Yet with all their pleasure and their hope, their knowledge of man's heart must have taught them not to be over confident, and therefore they would earnestly urge them to continue in the grace of God; to keep up the impression which had already outlasted their stay within the synagogue, to feed it, and keep it alive, and make it deeper and deeper, that it should remain with them for ever. What the issue was we know not, nor does that concern us,-only we may be sure that here, as in other iustances, there were some in whom their hopes and endeavours were disappointed; there were some in whom they were to their fullest extent realized.

It is very easy, speaking of this or any other congregation as a body,-considering them only as so many human beings, and not bringing any one of them distinctly home to our minds,—it is very easy to say, what is undoubtedly true, that of that multitude some will retain in their hearts what they hear spoken, and others will forget them; that some will believe, and others will not believe. But certain as this is, when put thus generally, yet the moment that we take away one individual, and present him to our minds, we could not bear-and it would be no less wrong than shocking-to con

ceive of him as of one that would not believe. For when we consider what is the full meaning of the words "not to believe," we cannot endure to connect a thought so dreadful with any human being who is to us more than an abstraction;-we cannot connect with any face, or voice, or mind that we have actually known, the idea of final impenitence. This is most right; but yet there is one exception; we may and ought in one instance to depart from the abstract view of the congregation around us. We ought not only to know generally that some will believe, and some will believe not; but in one case we should all make the thought distinct and definite; we should clearly and vividly connect the idea of faith and that of unbelief with a person, with a mind, with a being with which we are most familiar,we should follow the thought steadily, and not turn away from it till we had possessed ourselves with it wholly. Yes, my brethren, we should each of us do this in one instance, and in one only, and that instance is our own selves.

I lay the stress on the word "final." It is the notion of our believing or not believing at last that I wish us to dwell upon. We can bear to be unbelieving now, or even to think of ourselves as such ten or twenty years hence. But we must go farther-we must think what it is to be unbelieving at the last. We say that out of every

We are literally with

large congregation some will be so; let us exemplify it, then, in ourselves. We all know that there must be a time, though some of us may put it later than others, when repentance becomes impossible. Suppose ourselves arrived at that time. We have, then, no longer a Comforter, nor a Saviour, nor a God. In whatever sense the last words may be true, yet it is the doctrine of Scripture that God is in relation only with the living-to them who are dead, He is as though He did not exist at all. out God in the world; that is, without all that is good. We are with all that is evil, such as we now can conceive of, and probably much more. The worst men we know of,-the worst we have ever read of, have in them something that is not wholly evil. Pure evil we never saw, and can scarcely conceive it. It is a most faint image of it, yet one sufficiently horrible, to suppose all our acquaintance stripped of all their good and agreeable qualities, and with nothing left but their several faults. What should we, then, think of the prospect of passing a year or a month in such society? Conceive these faults increased to desperate and fiend-like wickedness, conceive that month or year multiplied into eternity, and we have something of our condition when we are unbelieving at the last. Add to this one thing more;-when we are in pain or trouble of any