to them, fresh force and strength to habits which that it becomes very difficult to break the haare to be broken off, our constancy is subdu-bit, without a general change of our whole ed before our work is accomplished. We con- system. Now I say, whenever this is a man's tinue yielding to the importunity of tempta-case, that he cannot shake off his sins withtion. We have gained nothing by our mise-out giving up his way of life, he must give up rable endeavour, but the mortification of de- that also, let it cost what it will; for it is in feat. Our sins are still repeated. The state truth no other sacrifice than what our Saviour of our salvation is where it was. Oh! it is a himself in the strongest terms enjoins, when laborious, a difficult, a painful work to shake he bids his disciples to pluck out a right eye, off sin; to change the course of a sinful life; or cut off a right hand (that is, surrender whatto quit gratifications to which we have been ever is most dear or valuable to them,) that accustomed, because we perceive them to be they be not cast with all their members into unlawful gratifications; and to find satisfac- hell fire. If a trade or business cannot be foltion in others which are innocent and virtu- lowed without giving into practices which conous. If in one thing more than another we science does not approve, we must relinquish stand in need of God's holy succour and assis- the trade or business itself. If it cannot be tance, of the aid and influence of his blessed followed without bringing us into the way of Spirit upon our souls, it is in the work of re- temptation to intemperance, more than we formation. But can we reasonably expect it, can withstand, or in fact do withstand, we whilst we are not sincere? And I say again, must also relinquish it, and turn ourselves to that the plan of gradual reformation is in con- some safer course. If the company we keep, tradiction to principle, and so far insincere. the conversation we hear, the objects that surIs there not reason to believe that this may round us, tend to draw us, and do in fact draw in some measure account for the failure of us, into debauchery and licentiousness, we these resolutions ? must fly from the place, the company, and the But it will be asked of us, what better plan objects, no matter with what reluctance we do have we to offer? We answer, to break off our so, or what loss and inconvenience we suffer sins at once. This is properly to deny ungod- by doing it. This may appear to be a hard liness and worldly lusts. This is truly to do, lesson: it is, nevertheless, what right reason' what, according to the apostle, the grace of God dictates, and what, as hath already been obteaches us to do. Acting thus, we may pray, served, our Saviour himself enjoins, in terms we may humbly hope for the assistance of made as strong and forcible as he could make God's Spirit in the work and struggle through them. which we have to go. And I take upon me Sometimes men are led by prudential moto say, that all experience is in favour of this tives, or by motives of mere inclination, to plan, in preference to that of a gradual re-change their employment, their habitation, or form; in favour of it, both with respect to their station of life. These occasions afford practicability, and with respect to ease and excellent and invaluable opportunities for corhappiness. We do not pretend but that recting and breaking off any vicious habits a conflict with desire must be supported; which we may have contracted. It is when that great resolution is necessary: yet we many associations, which give strength to a teach that the pain of the effort is lessened by sinful habit, are interrupted and dissolved by this method, as far as it can be lessened at all. the change which has taken place, that we Passions denied, firmly denied and resisted, can best resolve to conquer the sin, and set and not kept up by occasional indulgences, lose out upon a new course and a new life. The their power of tormenting. Habits, absolute-man who does not take advantage of such oply and totally disused, lose their hold. It is portunities when they arise, has not the salthe nature of man. They then leave us at li-vation of his soul at heart: nevertheless, they berty to seek and to find happiness elsewhere, are not to be waited for. in better things; to enjoy as well as to practise But to those sudden changes which we revirtue; to draw comfort from religion; to dwell upon its hopes; to pursue its duties; to acquire a love, a taste, and relish for its exercises and meditations. commend, will it be objected that they are seldom lasting? Is this the fact? Are they more liable to fail, than attempts to change gradually? I think not. And there is always this One very general cause of entanglement in difference between them. A sudden change habits of sin is the connexion which they have is sincere at the time; a gradual change never with our way of life, with our business, with is such truly and properly: and this is a mothe objects that are continually thrown in our mentous distinction. In every view, and in way, with the practices and usages which pre- every allowance, and in every plea of human vail in the company we keep. Every condi- frailty, we must distinguish between what is tion of life has its particular temptation. And consistent with sincerity, and what is not. not only so, but when we have fallen into evil And in these two methods of setting about a habits, these habits so mix themselves with our reformation, by reason of their different chamethod of life, return so upon us at their usual racter in this respect, the first may, though times and places, and occurrence of objects, with fear and humility, expect the help of God's aiding Spirit, the other harldly can. For whilst, not by surprise and unpremeditatedly, we fall into casual sins, but whilst, by plan and upon system, we allow ourselves in licenses, which, though not so many or so great as before, are still, whenever they are indulged, so many known sins; whilst, in a word, though we imagine ourselves to be in a progress of amendment, we yet deliberately It continue to sin, our endeavours are so corrupted, I will not say by imperfection, but by insincerity, that we can hardly hope to call down upon them the blessing of Almighty God. SERMON XXXIII. THIS LIFE A STATE OF PROBATION. is good for me that I have been afflicted, that might learn thy statutes.-Psal. cxix. 71. The Or the various views under which human life Reformation is never impossible; nor, in a a strict sense, can it be said to be doubtful. Nothing is, properly speaking, doubtful, which it is in a man's power to accomplish; nothing is doubtful to us, but what is placed out of the reach of our will, or depends upon causes which we cannot influence; and this is not the case with reformation from sin. On the other hand, if we look to experience, we are compelled, though with grief of heart, to confess that the danger is very great of a man, who is engaged in a course of sin, never re-or interruption; but they will be cured of this forming from his sin at all. Oh! let this danger be known. Let it stand, like a flaming sword, to turn us aside from the road to vice. Let it offer itself in its full magnitude. Let it strike, as it ought, the souls of those who are upon the brink, perhaps, of their whole future fate; who are tempted; and who are deliberating about entering upon some course of sin. delusion. Pain and sorrow, disease and infirmity, accident and disappointment, losses and distress, will soon meet them in their acquaintance, their families, or their persons. The hard-hearted for their own, the tender for others' woe, will always find and feel enough at least to convince them, that this world was not made for a scene of perpetual gaiety or uninterrupted enjoyment. Still less can we believe that it was made for a place of misery: so much otherwise, that misery is in no instance the end or object of contrivance. We are surrounded by contrivance and design. A human body is a cluster of contrivances. So is the body of Let also the perception and convincement of this danger sink deep into the hearts of all who are in such a situation, as that they must either reform or perish. They have it in their power, and it must be now their only hope, by strong and firm exertion, to make themselves an exception to the general lot of habitual sin-every animal; so is the structure of every ners It must be an exception. If they leave things to their course, they will share the fate in which they see others, involved in guilt like themselves, end their lives. It is only by a most strenuous effort they can rescue themselves from it. We apprise them, that their best hope is in a sudden and complete change, sincerely begun, faithfully persisted in; broken, it is possible, by human frailty, but never changed into a different plan, never declining into a compromised, partial, gradual reform; on the contrary, resumed with the same sincerity as that with which it set out, and with a force of resolution, and an earnestness of prayer, increased in proportion to the clearer view they have acquired of their danger and of their want. plant; so is even the vilest weed that grows upon the road-side. Contrivances, therefore, infinite in number, infinite also in variety, are all directed to beneficial purposes, and, in a vast plurality of instances, execute their purpose. In our own bodies only reflect how many thousand things must go right for us to be an hour at ease. Yet at all times multitudes are so; and are so without being sensible how great a thing it is. Too much or too little of sensibility, or of action, in any one of the almost numberless organs, or of any part of the numberless organs, by which life is sustained, may be productive of extreme anguish, or of lasting infirmity. A particle, smaller than an atom in a sun-beam, may, in a wrong place, be the occasion of the loss of limbs, of senses, or of life. Yet under all this continual jeopardy, this momentary liability to danger and disorder, we are preserved. It is not possible, therefore, that this state could be designed as a state of misery, because the great tendency of the designs which we see in the universe, is to counteract, to prevent, to guard against Now, beside that the social qualities which it. We know enough of nature to be assur-have been mentioned would be very limited in ed, that misery, universal, irremediable, inex- their exercise, if there was no evil in the world haustible misery, was in the Creator's power, if he had willed it. Forasmuch, therefore, as the result is so much otherwise, we are certain that no such purpose dwelt in the divine mind. But since, amidst much happiness, and amidst contrivances for happiness, so far as we can judge, (and of many we can judge,) misery, and very considerable portions of it do exist, it becomes a natural inquiry, to what end this mixture of good and evil is properly adapted? And I think the Scriptures place before us, not only the true, (for, if we believe the Scriptures, we must believe it to be that,) but the most rational and satisfactory answer which can be given to the inquiry; namely, that it is intended for a state of trial and probation. For it appears to me capable of proof, both that no state but one, which contained in it an admixture of good and evil, would be suited to this purpose; and also that our present state, as well in its general plan as in its particular properties, serves this purpose with peculiar propriety. but what was plainly a punishment (for though we might pity, and even that would be greatly checked, we could not actually succour or relieve, without disturbing the execution, or arresting, as it were, the hand of justice ;) beside this difficulty, there is another class of most important duties which would be in a great measure excluded. They are the severest, the sublimest, perhaps the most meritorious, of which we are capable; I mean patience and composure under distress, pain, and afflic tion; a stedfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and our dependence upon his final goodness, even at the time that every thing present is discouraging and adverse; and, what is no less difficult to retain, a cordial desire for the happiness and comfort of others, even then, when we are deprived of our own. I say, that the possession of this temper is almost the perfection of our nature. But it is then only possessed, when it is put to the trial: tried at all, it could not have been in a life made up only of pleasure and gratification. Few things are easier than to perceive, to feel, A state, totally incapable of misery, could to acknowledge, to extol the goodness of God, not be a state of probation. It would not be the bounty of Providence, the beauties of naa state in which virtue or vice could even be ture, when all things go well; when our health, exercised at all-I mean that large class of vir- our spirits, our circumstances, conspire to fill tues and vices, which we comprehend under our hearts with gladness, and our tongues with the name of social duties. The existence of praise. This is easy; this is delightful. None these depends upon the existence of misery as but they who are sunk in sensuality, sottishwell as of happiness in the world, and of dif-ness, and stupefaction, or whose understandferent degrees of both; because their very na-ings are dissipated by frivolous pursuits; none ture and difference consists in promoting or but the most giddy and insensible can be despreventing, in augmenting or diminishing, in titute of these sentiments. But this is not causing, aggravating, or relieving the wants, the trial or the proof. It is in the chambers sufferings, and distresses of our fellow-crea- of sickness; under the stroke of affliction; tures. Compassion, charity, humanity, bene- amidst the pinchings of want, the groans of volence, and even justice, could have no place pain, the pressures of infirmity; in grief, in in the world, if there were not human condi- misfortune; through gloom and horror-that tions to excite them; objects and sufferings it will be seen whether we hold fast our hope, upon which they might operate; misery, as our confidence, our trust in God; whether well as happiness, which might be affected by this hope and confidence be able to produce in them. us resignation, acquiescence, and submission. Nor would, in my opinion, the purposes of And as those dispositions, which perhaps form trial be sufficiently provided for, by a state in the comparative perfection of our moral nature, which happiness and misery regularly followed could not have been exercised in a world of virtue and vice; I mean, in which there was unmixed gratification, so neither would they no happiness, but what was merited by virtue; have found their proper office or object in a no misery but what was brought on by vice. state of strict and evident retribution; that Such a state would be a state of retribution, is, in which we had no sufferings to submit not a state of probation. It may be our state to, but what were evidently and manifestly hereafter; it may be a better state; but it is the punishment of our sins. A mere submisnot a state of probation, it is not the state sion to punishment, evidently and plainly such, through which it is fitting we should pass be- would not have constituted, at least would fore we enter into the other; for when we very imperfectly have constituted the disposispeak of a state of probation, we speak of a tion which we speak of, the true resignation state in which the character may both be put of a Christian. to the proof, and also its good qualities be con- It seems, therefore, to be argued, with very firmed and strengthened, if not formed and great probability, from the general economy of produced, by having occasions presented in things around us, that our present state was which they may be called forth and required. meant for a state of probation; because posi In tively it contains that admixture of good and lives or the lives of those with whom we were evil which ought to be found in such a state to connected, sufficient to carry on the regular make it answer its purpose-the production, offices of human society. In this respect, there. exercise, and improvement of virtue; and, fore, we see much wisdom. Supposing death because negatively, it could not be intended ei- to be appointed as the mode (and some mode ther for a state of absolute happiness, or a state there must be) of passing from one state of of absolute misery, neither of which it is. existence to another, the manner in which We may now also observe in what manner it is made to happen, conduces to the purposes many of the evils of life are adjusted to this of warning and admonition, without overparticular end, and how also they are contriv. throwing the conduct of human affairs. ed to soften and alleviate themselves and one Of sickness, the moral and religious use will another. It will be enough at present, if I be acknowledged, and, in fact, is acknowledg can point out how far this is the case in the ed, by all who have experienced it; and they two instances, which, of all others, the most who have not experienced it, own it to be a fit nearly and seriously affect us death and dis-state for the meditations, the offices of reliease. The events of life and death are so dis-gion. The fault, I fear, is, that we refer our. posed, as to beget, in all reflecting minds, a selves too much to that state. We think of constant watchfulness. "What I say unto these things too little in health, because we you I say unto all, watch." Hold yourselves in shall necessarily have to think of them when a constant state of preparation. "Be ready, we come to die. This is a great fault; but for you know not when your Lord cometh." then it confesses, what is undoubtedly true, Had there been assigned to our lives a certain that the sick-bed and the death-bed shall inage or period, to which all, or almost all, were evitably force these reflections upon us. sure of arriving: in the younger part, that is that it is right, though it be wrong in waiting to say, in nine-tenths of the whole of man- till the season of actual virtue and actual rekind, there would have been such an absolute formation be past, and when, consequently, security as would have produced, it is much to the sick-bed and the death-bed can bring no. be feared, the utmost neglect of duty, of reli- thing but uncertainty, horror, and despair. gion, of God, of themselves; whilst the re. But my present subject leads me to consider maining part would have been too much over- sickness, not so much as a preparation for come with the certainty of their fate, would death as the trial of our virtues; of virtues have too much resembled the condition of those the most severe, the most arduous, perhaps the who have before their eyes a fixed and ap- best pleasing to Almighty God; namely, trust pointed day of execution. The same conse- and confidence in him under circumstances of quence would have ensued if death had follow-discouragement and perplexity. To lift up the ed any known rule whatever. It would have feeble hands and the languid eye; to draw and produced security in one part of the species, turn with holy hope to our Creator, when eve and despair in another. The first would have ry comfort forsakes us, and every help fails; been in the highest degree dangerous to the to feel and find in him, in his mercies, his procharacter; the second, insupportable to the mises, in the works of his providence, and still spirits. The same observation we are entitled more in his word, and in the revelation of his to repeat concerning the two cases of sudden designs by Jesus Christ, such rest and conso death, and of death brought on by long disease. lation to the soul as to stifle our complaints If sudden deaths never occurred, those who and pacify our murmurs; to beget in our found themselves free from disease would be hearts tranquillity and confidence in the place in perfect safety; they would regard them- of terror and consternation, and this with sim. selves as out of the reach of danger. With plicity and sincerity, without having, or wish. all apprehensions they would lose all serious-ing to have, one human witness to observe or ness and all restraint: and those persons who know it,-is such a test and trial of faith and the most want to be checked and to be awak- hope, of patience and devotion, as cannot fail ened to a sense of the consequences of virtue of being in a very high degree well-pleasing to and vice, the strong, the healthy, and the ac- the Author of our natures, the guardian, the tive, would be without the greatest of all checks, inspector, and the rewarder of our virtues. It that which arises from the constant liability of is true in this instance, as it is true in all, that being called to judgment. If there were no whatever tries our virtue strengthens and imsudden deaths, the most awful warning which proves it. Virtue comes out of the fire purer mortals can receive would be lost: That con- and brighter than it went into it. Many virsideration which carries the mind the most tues are not only proved but produced by forcibly to religion, which convinces us that it trials: they have properly no existence withis indeed our proper concern, namely, the pre-out them. "We glory," saith St. Paul, "in cariousness of our present condition, would be tribulation also,knowing that tribulation work. done away. On the other hand, if sudden eth patience, and patience experience, and exdeaths were too frequent, human life might perience hope." become too perilous: there would not be sta- But of sickness we may likewise remark, how bility and dependence either upon our own wonderfully it reconciles us to the thoughts the expectation, and the approach of death; directly and by implication, a doctrine certainand how this becomes, in the hand of Provi, ly of great personal importance, and, I trust, dence, an example of one evil being made to also of great comfort to every man who hears correct another. Without question, the dif.me. The clause is this, "That we may preference is wide between the sensations of a sent every man perfect in Jesus Christ:" by person who is condemned to die by violence, which I understand St. Paul to express his and of one who is brought gradually to his hope and prayer, that at the general judgment end by the progress of disease; and this dif- of the world, he might present to Christ the ference sickness produces. To the Christian fruits of his ministry, the converts whom he whose mind is not harrowed up by the memo- had made to his faith and religion, and might ry of unrepented guilt, the calm and gentle present them perfect in every good work. And approach of his dissolution has nothing in it if this be rightly interpreted, then it affords terrible. In that sacred custody in which they a manifest and necessary inference, that the that sleep in Christ will be preserved, he sees saints in a future life will meet and be known a rest. from pain and weariness, from trouble again to one another; for how, without knowand distress: Gradually withdrawn from the ing again his converts in their new and gloricares and interests of the world; more and fied state, could St. Paul desire or expect to more weaned from the pleasures of the body, present them at the last day? and feeling the weight and pressure of its My brethren, this is a doctrine of real coninfirmities, he may be brought almost to de- sequence. That we shall come again to a new sire with St. Paul to be no longer absent from life; that we shall by some method or other, Christ; knowing, as he did, and as he assures be made happy, or be made miserable, in that us, that "if our earthly house of this taber-new state, according to the deeds done in the nacle were dissolved, we have a building of body, according as we have acted and governed God, a house not made with hands, eternal in ourselves in this world, is a point affirmed abthe heavens." SERMON XXXIV. solutely and positively, in all shapes, and under every variety of expresssion, in almost every page of the New Testament. It is the grand point inculcated from the beginning to the end of that book. But concerning the particular nature of the change we are to undergo, and in what is to consist the employment and hap piness of those blessed spirits which are receiv THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER IN A ed into heaven, our information, even under FUTURE STATE. Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.-Col. i. 28. the Gospel, is very limited. We own it is so Even St. Paul, who had extraordinary.com. munications, confessed, "that in these things we see through a glass darkly." But at the same time that we acknowledge that we know little, we ought to remember, that without Christ, we should have known nothing. It THESE words have a primary and a secondary might not be possible, in our own present state, use. In their first and most obvious view, they to convey to us, by words, more clear or exexpress the extreme earnestness and anxiety plicit conceptions of what will hereafter be with which the apostle Paul sought the salva-come of us; if possible, it might not be fitting. tion of his converts. To bring men to Jesus In that celebrated chapter, the 15th of 1st Co Christ, and, when brought, to turn and save rinthians, St. Paul makes an inquisitive per them from their sins, and to keep them sted-son ask, "How are the dead raised, and with fast unto the end in the faith and obedience what body do they come ?" From his answer to which they were called, was the whole to this question we are able, I think, to colwork of the great apostle's ministry, the de- lect thus much clearly and certainly: that at sire of his heart, and the labour of his life: the resurrection we shall have bodies of some it was that in which he spent all his time and sort or other: that they will be totally different all his thought; for the sake of which he tra- from, and greatly excelling, our present bodies, velled from country to country, warning eve- though possibly in some manner or other pro ry man, as he speaks in the text, and exhort-ceeding from them, as a plant from its seed: ing every man, enduring every hardship and that as there exists in nature a great variety every injury, ready at all times to sacrifice his of animal substances; one flesh of man, ano life, and at last actually sacrificing it in order ther of beasts, another of birds, another of fish to accomplish the great purpose of his mission, es; as there exists also great differences in that he might at the last day present his be the nature, dignity, and splendour of inaniloved converts perfect in Christ Jesus. This mate substances, "one glory of the sun, anois the direct scope of the text. But it is not ther of the moon, another of the stars;" so. for this that I have made choice of it. The there subsist, likewise, in the magazines of last clause of the verse contains within it, in- God Almighty's creation, two very distinct |