one with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other.

With this accumulated evidence, which it is impossible adequately to appreciate which, in its simplicity, its variety, its independence, and its force, baffles, like all the other works of God, the powers of man fully to develop-Christianity meets the moral and accountable being to whom it is addressed. Christianity, so excellent in itself, as scarcely to require any evidence, possesses in fact every species; and then comes to man, already under the antecedent obligations and natural bonds to his Maker and Benefactor; and says to him, 'Give me your attention; yield up to me your passions; submit to me your will; open to me your intellectual and moral powers. I will enlighten, and restore, and console, and bless you; I will teach you the source of your present errors and ignorance; I will lay open to you the whole of your malady; I will guide you to the fountain of salvation. Bow only your proud rebellious intellect; pretend not to divine all the reasons of my conduct; submit to that state of probation, both as to knowledge and duty, which I assign you. Lo, I offer all needful succour. The aids of grace, the strength and illumination of the Holy Spirit are before you. Yield, then, the contest. You cannot overcome, if you persevere in resistance; you are bound by every moral tie that can surround man; you are in my power; you cannot elude nor defy with safety my vengeance.'

Yes, my brethren, I hope I have, in some measure, gained my cause. Surely my pleading with you, for your own happiness, will not be wholly in vain.

I have touched on the grounds of the obligations under which you lie. Bear with me whilst I remind

you,

IV. Of the PARTICULAR

ADVANTAGES WHICH

8 Paley.

EACH OF YOU HAS RESPECTIVELY ENJOYED, AND WHICH UNSPEAKABLY AUGMENT THE DUTY OF BELIEVING IN CHRISTIANITY. For, besides those evidences which lie open to the universal attention of mankind, God has been surrounding you with circumstances of advantage for weighing these proofs, and for complying with the obligations arising from them. The country in which you were born, the events of life which a good providence has ordered, the strivings of the Holy Spirit with your conscience, the advice, and examples, and prayers of ministers and friends, have bound your duty upon you with additional ties.

1. For YOU WERE NOT BORN IN A HEATHEN LAND, far from the knowledge of Christ, where no sabbath-rest invited you to religion; no profession of the gospel in your country called your notice to its claims; but where all was buried in nature's night. You might have had your lot cast in such nations, with the millions of the heathen, and have had no means of information as to Christianity, but such as some benevolent missionary might bring you. But you were born in a Christian country. Religion received you in her arms; she took you, and admitted you into the Christian church; she washed you in the waters of baptism; she committed you to Christian parents and friends; she put the sacred Volume into your hands; she has followed you with her prayers.

Nor was it in a dark period of the Christian dispensation that you were born, nor in a country where the grossest corruptions of it prevailed. No; you were born in a pure and enlightened day; in a protestant land; under a government and laws which respected and upheld the Christian faith, at a time when the efforts of infidelity had been exposed by the horrors of the continental philosophy and the crimes of infidels and scoffers; when the facts as to the darkness and depravity of heathen nations had been demonstrated in the clearest manner; and the beneficial tendency of

Christianity had been proved in the missions abroad, and the revived attention to religion at home. But these are not all your particular advantages.

2. THE EVENTS OF LIFE HAVE BEEN So ORDERED BY THE GRACIOUS Providence of GOD, as, on various occasions, to aid the tendency of these external circumstances of birth.

Yes, there is not one before me, but has been led, at one time or other, by the course of events, to additional means of salvation. Changes in your pursuits have brought you within the reach of the good and pious. Journeys and retirements have afforded you peculiar seasons of recollection. The consequences of folly and sin have been demonstrated to you in your own case, or in that of others. Disappointments in your most ardent expectations have made you feel the uncertainty of this world's happiness, and the necessity of seeking after that which Christianity presents. Unexpected blessings and deliverances have been vouchsafed you in seasons of peculiar emergency; your life has been spared; disease has been stopped when at its height; death has been arrested as he was entering your abode. Retrace the history of your life, and the mercies of a providential care will be most apparent. Nor have the least important moments been those of peculiar affliction, deep domestic calamities, and personal sorrows. In these events God has spoken to you in the interior of the heart; religion has appeared in its just excellence; and interposing passions and pursuits have suspended their fascinations. What use have you made of these occurrences? Have you looked up to the hand which guided you unseen? Have you considered the obligations of obedience to his Revelation, as augmented by these appointments of the Almighty ?

3. And what have you done in consequence of THOSE MOTIONS OF THE BLESSED SPIRIT, which have not failed to suggest to you the necessity of sub

mission to your God? You know not, possibly, what is meant by the influences of the Holy Spirit. I will tell you, that the Christianity which you are SO little acquainted with, consists much, as to its practical blessings upon the heart, in the influences of divine grace; in the agency of the Holy Spirit. We have largely referred to this topic in former Lectures. I recur to it now, to show you the obligations you are under to the great God and Father of all. Yes, those disturbances of mind, that uneasiness of conscience, those regrets after the commission of sin, those convictions of the importance of religion, that fear of death, those intervals of religious impression, those thoughts of God and duty which have visited your souls, have not been unattended with the additional force and pungency which the influences of grace bestow. It is the Holy Spirit of God which has been remonstrating, calling, inviting you, by these operations of your intellectual and moral powers. And for all this aid you will have to give an account. These movements of grace have conspired with the events of your life, and have been most persuasive when your outward circumstances called you most loudly to consideration. There have been times, perhaps, when you were, like the king Agrippa, "almost persuaded to be a Christian."" There have been times, when, like the wretched Herod, you have "observed" the minister of religion, and done "many things and heard him gladly." All these inward motions of the Spirit bring a deep responsibility with them; they cannot be neglected nor quenched with impunity. But this is not all.

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OF MI

4. THE ADVICE, EXAMPLE, AND PRAYERS NISTERS AND FRIENDS have, in most of those before me, swelled the catalogue of advantages, for which an account must be rendered to God You have had the best counsel offered you in the most affectionate man

9 Acts xxvi 28.

10 Mark vi. 20.

ner; you have had that advice sustained by the holy example, and consistent lives, and happy deaths of those who gave it; you have seen, in your circle, perhaps in your immediate family, examples of rare virtue, instances of conversion, the calm tenor of a Christian life and conduct; you have had religion embodied before your eyes; you have witnessed the last hours of departing piety. A mother's prayers, which followed you through life, have been poured out for you on the bed of death. A father's wise counsel has been solemnly repeated amidst the expiring accents of struggling nature; and the anxiety and entreaties of health have been confirmed by the faint prayers of his last sickness. The minister of religion has followed you with his affectionate and persuasive entreaties. He has visited your sick chamber. He has witnessed the vows of amendment and conversion, which you forgot, alas! almost as soon as the occasion passed. He has addressed to you his gentle remonstrances. He waits for your reformation. His prayers, his labours, his public and private instructions, are directed to one object, your salvation.

And will you not yield? Shall not all these tender considerations persuade you to your duty, which you ought to discharge if not one of them existed? Remember, if you forget them, your Maker does not; if you fail to regard them, there is a book in which every one is noted; if you retrace not the series of particular advantages, God will republish them before an assembled world. Yes, moral obligations cannot be burst asunder with impunity. The Almighty has a book of reckoning, to which the volume of your past history will respond, and which the records of conscience will confirin.

It is not yet too late. All your advantages may yet be turned to the end for which they were granted. Salvation is yet proposed. The gospel calls you to obedience. Believe the divine Revelation. Hesitate