proportionate to the obligations under which his grace has placed you, and to the religious means which you enjoy, throws a damp over your persuasion of interest in the Redeemer, and leads you into captivity, eliciting the mournful exclamation, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Do you suffer for a life devoted to religion from the world that traduces and persecutes you for its sake, and takes occasion from your forgiving spirit and patient endurance to heap on you fresh accusations and reiterated wrongs? Behold a habitation where sorrow and sighing shall flee away; where the wicked cease from troubling; where the former things have passed away, and sin with all its effects shall be banished; where doubts and fears shall be removed, and faith be lost in fruition; and where God himself shall wipe away all tears from your eyes. Eneas is represented by Virgil as cheering his companions after encountering a storm and severe loss, with these words," Companions, God will give an end to these evils: with me ye have tried the whirlpools and the rocks and the cyclops' den; dismiss your fears; perhaps hereafter it will be pleasant to recount your dangers o'er, through various troubles, we move to Latium and the realms foretold of Jove." Much greater consolation is afforded to the Christian by St. John, in relating a scene in heaven which he beheld: "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes; and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me,

These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Believers prize them, and glory in them, and sinners anxiously endeavour after this noble acquisition, this balm of life, this patience of hope, always remembering that it is a hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore different from that vague hope in God's mercy, which some indulge without any reference to Christ and his atonement, -an expectation that is groundless and can never be realized, for Jehovah is gracious only in his Son, and to such as are clothed in his righteousness, remembering that it is a hope in our Redeemer, and therefore sure to his disciples, for it rests upon his meritorious work, and is confirmed by promises and an oath, as the Apostle declares, "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us in the Gospel, and is constantly as an anchor of the soul sure and stedfast, entering into that which is within the veil."

129

THE STRAIGHT GATE.

Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Matt. vii. 14.

EVERY state of the church has hitherto had its peculiar evils, and it is the province and duty of its public ministers to know these, and warn the professing body of the danger. Let us apply this principle to our own times: tired of the fiercer and fruitless controversies about points in which Christians differ, and that are either light as air, or, if important, covered with a vail that we cannot lift; professors have with equal avidity thrown down their weapons, joined the right hand of fellowship, and united in unfurling, amid general acclamation, the flag of liberality in religion. So far as it regards the merging of peculiar views in the grander articles of agreement, and a union in urging on the noble efforts for evangelizing the world, we join in the praise of liberal sentiment, and see in it nothing to alarm, but every thing to excite gratitude and praise yet censure us not, if with our congratulations we mingle cautionary advice. In the times of persecutions and fiery trial, the preachers of the cross have known how to speak in heaven's own raptures of the church's bliss; have known how to

open the flood-gate, and let in the full tide of the Spirit's consolation upon the souls devoted to martyrdom; but when the church is at peace, they have found it necessary to guard against, and condemn the lukewarmness to vital Christianity so frequently accompanying such a state. Amid the promising features of the present day this strain is not to be disregarded or considered unseasonable. Satan is still your watchful and powerful and persevering foe; he will not be slow in changing his mode of attack, and taking advantage of the times. The world is also in active pursuit of liberality, and we have seen her triumphal processions in honour of her victories: the world has entered too upon the hallowed ground of the sanctuary, and dared to offer her views of charity in religion: here is the engine that Satan will now employ to the destruction of men's souls, under the general name of liberal views; he will persaade men that it is easy to go to heaven, and that men of all religions, in a judgment of charity, we must suppose are on their journey to the New Jerusalem. If he took occasion, from a state of bigotted attachment to party schemes, to fix men in acquiring the subtle distinctions of a creed instead of laying hold upon a crucified Saviour, and partaking the bread of life, he will, under existing circnmstances, endeavour to urge men over the extreme of liberality upon the confines of licentiousness, whose end is atheism. The human mind is prone to extremes, and the transition was quick and surprising from the austerity of Cromwell's court to the disso

Al

lute voluptuousness of the second Charles. ready men begin to tell us, that it does not agree with this charitable age in which we live, to consider the Socinian and others who deny the divinity and mediatorial character of our Lord Jesus Christ without the boundaries of salvation. But may I not take my notions of this virtue of benevolence from Him who, in saving our ruined race, has manifested a liberality as expansive as the infinitude of his nature; and yet these are his words, "All men shall honour the Son even as they honour the Father;" and when he bringeth his firstbegotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship; and in reference to his death," Awake, O sword, against the shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord;" "and whilst we were yet sinners, in due time Christ died for the ungodly;" "God hath set forth his Son to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" there is no other name under heaven given whereby we can be saved; "I am the way, I am the door; by me if any man entereth in he shall be saved; and whoso believeth not the Son is condemned already, and he shall never see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Christ then is the gate mentioned in our text,-Christ in his atoning blood; and those who reject this great sacrifice once offered for the sins of men, shall perish without hope, and be confounded at his second coming, when he shall take vengeance upon his adversaries, and those who would not that he should reign over them. To hold a contrary belief is not to manifest liberal views, for to deserve