TO DEPART FROM YOU, and give you up to judicial blindness and obduracy of heart. If you go on in vain curiosity and idle intercourse with the scoffer; if you live in vice and moral evils contrary to known duty-fear lest the blessed guide and sanctifier of man should be grieved, and should depart from you. I address you as the disciple of the Christian religion; I address you as one who knows the divine agent and author of grace; I address you as one who knows the ordinary dealings of the Almighty, whose "Spirit doth not always strive with man;" "21 but who left Pharaoh to his impenitent heart; who consigned the Jews to obduracy and unbelief; and who threatens all who "love not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness, with being given up to a strong delusion, to believe a lie." If once given up of God, any objections will avail to turn you from Christianity; the weakest sophisms will be too strong for you; the mightiest host of facts and historical evidences will appear of no force in your view; you will go on from worse to worse-from negligence to scorn; from speculative to practical unbelief; from the trifling and indevout, to the daring and presumptuous temper, which defies God, disowns the Saviour, and rushes madly upon eternity.

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IV. In order to avoid any approach to this fatal end, SEE THAT YOU HAVE A REAL HOLD OF chrisTIANITY IN ITS SUBSTANTIAL BLESSINGS-in its actual efficacy upon your heart and life. Speculative objections have little force to perplex the practical and spiritually-minded Christian. He has the shield of faith, which quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one. On the other hand, he who has never felt religion, and known its power, has a great disadvantage in coping with an ingenious disputant. His heart hav

21 Gen. vi. 3.

22 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12.

ing never been affected and blessed with Christianity, he holds by it slightly; he rather hangs upon it, than embraces it; he retains it merely by an hereditary prejudice: he sees no reason why opinions and sentiments should be thought of so great consequence; he thinks, perhaps, all opinions immaterial. Christianity has never given him an actual power against his passions; Christianity has never raised, and blessed, and consoled his heart in affliction; Christianity has never brought him to pardon, peace, and a new and heavenly life; Christianity is to him little more than a code of restraints, with certain religious ceremonies attached to them. Thus sitting loose to all that is vital in his religion, what wonder is it, if, when infidelity spreads its snares, he is taken? Let the young, then, seek for the practical influences of Christianity; let them make a trial of its promised grace; let them know it as THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION-and scientific reasonings will never overthrow their strong and well-grounded faith. For,

V. They will soon discover that the objections of infidelity are, in truth, ONE OF The great straTAGEMS OF SATAN, THE SPIRITUAL ADVERSARY. They learn from Revelation the power, the malice, the artifice of that apostate spirit. They know that, from the period of his successful temptation of our first parents, he has been systematically opposing THE SEED OF THE WOMAN, who was so long promised, and who, at length, appeared to destroy the works of the devil. They know that this deadly adversary has instigated, in different ages, various instruments for hardening the heart of man, and defeating the purposes of redemption. He worked by heathen idolatry, so long as that could be sustained; he worked by superstition and spiritual bondage, during the dark ages; he works now by SPECULATIVE OBJECTIONS, the abuse of literature, a confidence in talents, education, and the reasoning

powers of man. Behold, then, in this one consideration, the whole web of infidel speculations unravelled. No wonder these vain and futile fabrications, though possessing little force in themselves against positive facts, though directed to a wrong point and inadmissible, though inconsistent and contradictory and frivolous, the manifest product of human pride and ignorance; no wonder they still deceive so many-for the secret is now laid open. The whole system is a part of Satan's agency with the intent to ruin man. They are temptations, not reasons; the shafts of the wicked one, not the armour of truth.

Resist, then, these assaults of your spiritual adversary; cherish not the imaginations which subserve your own destruction; treat them as you would the robber who should enter your dwelling, to spoil it of your most valuable possessions; quench the suggestions of the arch-deceiver, and open your hearts to the fair and manly operations of conscience and truth.

VI. Finally, consider these vain objections as THE

MOST DEADLY PRODUCT OF THE CORRUPT AND PROUD REASON OF A FALLEN CREATURE. This is the sum of the present Lecture, which I must hasten to conclude. Objections are the offspring of man's corrupt and depraved nature, where all the faculties of body and soul are disturbed and weakened. They form an unhealthy atmosphere around this lower world. Christianity comes to remedy the evil. It calls for the humiliation of the understanding before the revealed will of God, and the subjection of the passions and appetites to the revealed precepts of God. It is as much a branch of moral duty to believe, when God grants such evidences as he has done in the case of Christianity, as it is to restrain the inferior appetites, when the same almighty Lord has issued his prohibitions against vice and immorality. To re

ject interposing doubts, to turn away from objections, to silence vain curiosity, to rebuke presumptuous daring, to check the roving imaginations of the intellect; to call in the aid of grace for this end; to quench the suggestions of Satan by the blessed aid of the Holy Spirit; to enter more and more into the practical experience of religion-this is the wisdom of man. This purifies the atmosphere, or guards us from its destructive qualities. This teaches us to consider all speculative objections which rise in the mind against the evidences or the matter of Christianity, as the noxious vapours generated in a prurient soil -as the product of reason weakened and perverted -as the arts of Satan operating upon a sinful imagination.

Cling, then, to Christianity as your light and protection. She throws a safeguard and barrier around you in a dark world. She detects the sophistry of infidelity, and sends you unhurt to pursue your salvation, in the midst of the errors and confusions of this probationary state-she guards you from the unhealthy vapours which collect around, and prevents the explosions which would otherwise prove fatal to you.

Yes; as the miner is furnished with the LAMP OF SAFETY, and obtains light and security when he descends the subterraneous cavern, where the firedamp might explode and bury him in destruction; and as, guided by his LAMP, he is protected from the fatal dangers of combustion, pursues his calling, and returns to his home and his family and the light of day, unhurt.

So does Christianity furnish you with THE TRUE SAFETY LAMP, when called to descend the caverns and depths of Satan, in this benighted world-so does Christianity neutralize and carry off the mischievous effects of infidelity-so does she shield your

mind and surround you with a defence, which, whilst it affords you light and security for your work, preserves you from the fatal dangers to which an unprotected heart might be exposed, and sends you up again in safety, to the ordinary discharge of your Christian calling in the cheering light of day.