Therefore to the young particularly do I address myself, leaving these efforts in the hands of Him, who alone can water and bless the seeds which are sown.

"See the sole bliss heav'n could on all bestow! "Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know; "Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, "The bad must miss; the good untaught will find; "Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, "But looks through nature up to nature's God; "Pursues that chain which links th' immense design, "Joins heav'n and earth, and mortal and divine; "Sees that no being any bliss can know, "But touches some above and some below; "Learns, from this union of the rising whole, "The first, last purpose of the human soul; "And knows where Faith, Law, Morals, all began, "All end, in love of God, and love of man. "For him alone, Hope leads from goal to goal,

"And opens still and opens on his soul;

"Till lengthen❜d on to Faith, and unconfined, "It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind:

"He sees why nature plants in man alone

"Hope of known bliss, and Faith in bliss unknown: "That virtue only makes our bliss below;

“And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.”

POPE.

T

ON REGENERATION.

SHEWING THE NECESSITY OF IT TO OBTAIN TRUE PEACE; CONVICTION THE FIRST WORK; THE EFFECTS OF CONVICTION CAUSING THE SOUL TO FLEE TO CHRIST AS THE ONLY REFUGE; AND LASTLY, THE HAPPY FRUITS.

Chapter E.

THE Almighty, by the prophet Ezekiel, has declared, "Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine;" (a) therefore all are capable of salvation; otherwise the words of our Saviour had not been spoken to Nicodemus; "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can

(a) Ezek. 18. 4.

B

not see the kingdom of God." (b) These words are equally applicable to us, whether high or low, rich or poor; whether a doctor, a master of Israel, a learned scholar, a person of great abilities in other things; we may have read long in the scriptures of truth, and have heard much weighty counsel and instruction; but ah! it perhaps may be, all the work is to do within still.

Let us then preach this sermon of our Holy Redeemer's to our own soul: "unless I be born again, I cannot enter into heaven." Born again! what is that? Was ever such a thing done upon me? Was ever I cast into the pangs of a new birth?

And con

tinued I in those pangs until Christ Jesus was formed in me? Are old things done away, and all things now become new? Are the old desires, the old conversation, quite abandoned and left? Are my principles new? My aims and ends new? My

(b) John, 3. 3.

life and conversation new? Only consider, O my soul, as if this sermon and all the rest had been preached to thee; surely there is a speaking of Christ from heaven;

66

see that ye refuse not him" (says the Apostle) "that speaks from heaven." But let us proceed, and "know assuredly that God has made that same Jesus, whom we have crucified with our affections and desires, both Lord and Christ:" (c) and who will, by convincing our soul of its corruption and darkness, be the light of God shining into our soul, which will give us a view of our sad apostacy from the primitive state, of which it is said, we were created in the "image of God:" and will raise a cry in our hearts, "What shall we do?" we, "who had our conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." (d)