came over readily to the profession of Christianity. But they had not known Christ's forerunner, they had not been baptized with the baptism of repentance. Therefore they often turned the grace of God into lasciviousness: they caught hold of the promises of the Gospel without having ever dreaded the threats of the law; and therefore they naturally enough lowered the standard of Christian holiness, and instead of overcoming sin, were driven to that grievous state of denying sin to be sin, because they the children of God, as they boasted, had committed it; and the children of God, they said, could not sin.

Another example occurred, somewhat later, and was followed by consequences more widely mischievous. When the northern nations came down upon the Roman empire, their kings and great men were soon persuaded to become Christians, as it was called; that is, to acknowledge Christ to be their God, and to worship Him instead of idols. In one instance we are told, that one of these chiefs became a Christian, because he ascribed a victory which he had won over his enemies to the power of Christ in his behalf, exerted in answer to a prayer which his wife had persuaded him to offer. We can see that here Christ's forerunner had been little known; that no repentance had prepared the way for the word of life; that Christ was received, not as a new principle of life into a new creature, but

rather as an old principle suited to the old nature, and only presenting itself under another name. And therefore Christ's Gospel grew mighty in word, but not in power; the new converts, as they were called, kept their old superstitions under new names, and indulged all their old passions; and thus it came to pass that the history of modern times has in so many points exactly resembled that of ancient times; that wars, and cruelties, and covetousness, and injustice of every kind, prevailed as much under what was in name the kingdom of Christ, as it had done in the days of heathenism.

These are the examples of history, but those of private life will come nearer to the matter. Why is it, that within our own knowledge, where all profess to believe in Christ, the work of His Spirit is yet wrought so imperfectly? Why are not our lives and thoughts Christian, as well as our outward profession? Is it not because with us too, in so many instances, Christ has been preached to us without His forerunner; because we have never been prepared by repentance to receive his salvation aright? And is not this apt to be the case where our instruction in religion is given us so often as a matter of course along with instruction in other matters, that we hear of Christ, and learn to call ourselves Christians, without connecting that name with any change in our own hearts and lives, or understanding any thing of the necessity of a pre

vious preparation for it? So with us the old nature, and the old notions, and the old practice, often remain unaltered; and we offer the strange spectacle of persons calling themselves Christians, yet neither speaking the language, and much less adopting the practice, of that kingdom of which they profess to be members.

And this will account for the marked difference which sometimes takes place at a later period in life, when a person receives a strong religious impression. If we examine, we shall find that in such cases Christ's forerunner has done his work; repentance has prepared the way of the Lord, and made His paths straight. For a religious impression, I suppose, means always this, that something or other has put us in mind of God's judgment, and our danger from it has made us think of death, and how little prepared we are to meet it. The impression, in short, is one leading directly to repentance, to serious thoughts about good and evil, to a turning from the latter, and seeking the former with all earnestness; and so it puts us in a disposition to receive Christ's Gospel aright. For if we receive Christ as a Saviour from an evil which we had learned to dread and to hate,-I mean sin,— then we shall avail ourselves gladly of His aid to conquer this evil, and Christ will be truly our righteousness. But if we have not learned to dread and to hate sin, then we shall not think of

going to Christ for help against it, but shall think that He will save us in our sins, instead of delivering us from them.

Again, the preparation of Christ's forerunner is needed, because we are apt, as the world goes on, to take up our notions of right and wrong from those about us; to call good what the world calls good, and evil what the world calls evil. I am not speaking now of an entire confusion between them, of calling evil good and good evil; but rather of our taking a very low standard of good, and a very high one of evil; of our thinking very much of a very little good, and very little of a very great evil. This is what is meant by the prophet Isaiah, when in describing the perfect kingdom of God he says, "The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful; that is to say, that very low measure of liberality, and bounty which we praise as a great virtue, shall then sink to its proper level; and so, on the other hand, the sins which we treat lightly under the names of foibles or imperfections, shall then rise to their proper level, and shall be found to be the ruin of souls. Now we cannot wonder that the Jews and heathens had got so low a standard of goodness, and so much needed to be taught to repent, when the same thing has happened even in the light of the Gospel; and our common standard is notoriously so different from that given us in Christ's

law. Thus the business of Christ's forerunner was to make men aware of this, to show them that their notions of good and evil wanted correction; that far less faults than they dreamed of would be their condemnation in God's judgment, that far higher virtues than those which they thought excellent were needed to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

But what shall we do then? Must we wait for Elijah to appear once more, for one like John the Baptist to arise in the spirit and power of Elijah, before the coming of the last great day of the Lord's judgment? It is no unreasonable belief that the prophecy will yet be fulfilled again; that as John the Baptist was the Elijah to prepare the way for Christ's first coming, so another Elijah may yet arise to prepare the way for His second. But whether it may be fulfilled in one individual or in more, or in any one church, or in any one people, this can be known only in its season, when God shall reveal it. Meantime we should remember that our Lord was pleased to make the baptism of water the way by which we all should be admitted into His kingdom, in order to show us that His forerunner's work is ever needed; and that as He Himself came not by water only, but by water and blood, so He came not by blood only, but by blood and water; that repentance and His salvation could never be parted