moral change, society indeed may applaud you, your neighbour may profit by your reformation, but God accepts not such imperfect services. He will himself have a share in the work; each person in the blessed Trinity will have a share in it; and angels will celebrate the glad tidings with

their responsive voices. All the powers of

heaven are moved at so great an event as the conversion of a sinner. Who would not desire to become an interested party in this glorious confederacy? We are all invited to be members of it. But before we can be admitted, there must be a deep conviction of our natural state as sinners, a thorough rejection of any thing like merit or innocence in ourselves, an entire leaning and dependence on him who is mighty to bear our burdens, and willing to save to the uttermost all who call upon him, under a deep sense of their own unworthiness.

Hear the language of the prophet to the selfrighteous moralist, who despises the doctrine of a change of heart, so constantly put forth in Scripture" Thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest

I have not sinned. The Lord hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them."

The blindness of the natural heart incapacitates it from understanding the deadly nature of sin. The early training of education gives, for the most part, to all who have been under its influence, a correct idea of what is socially right or wrong. But it leaves the heart practically unacquainted with the subject of its original birth unto sin, and the necessity of " a new birth unto righteousness." This knowledge both the Bible and Christian experience teach us to be the peculiar gift of the Spirit of God. A man may to a certain extent fulfil the moral law, without any distinct notion of a radical disunion from the lawgiver. We are conceived and born in sin. The restraints of society may prevent that sin from breaking out into flagrant acts; but that operation of the Spirit, concurring with the movement of the soul to receive its heavenly influence, which in our text is termed repentance, or change of mind, can alone rescue us from its dominion. The fairest decorations of moral beauty, without this vivifying principle, are but as garlands

wreathed around some withered trunk. They are cut off from their source of germination and life, and though for a while retaining apparent freshness from artificial means, they must finally droop, wither, and die.

To you then, brethren, who feel not this holy source of activity within you—whether you measure your conduct by the decent rules of civilized life, or tear off its restraints as so many uneasy trammels to you the text chiefly addresses itself, Sinner, repent! awake from the sleep of death! Behold the morning of redemption is waiting to dawn upon you! The bright brow of the Sun of righteousness springing up in your horizon will be hailed by the sinless harmonies of God's own orchestra. The joy of her who rejoiceth that a man is born into the world is faint indeed, compared to the exultation of the angelic throng, when they hail the birth of a soul unto glory.

And remember ye, over whom that important movement hath passed, that if the last echo of the note of gladness for your justification hath ceased in heaven, the angels of God are waiting in blissful hope of that hour when

the period of your sanctification shall be accomplished when they may welcome you in the full maturity of faith to the everlasting participation of the joy that is in heaven.

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SERMON XVII.

THE POWER OF FAITH.

MATTHEW Xvii. 20, 21.

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit, this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

senses.

IN studying the sacred writings, difficulties are occasionally found to arise in consequence of the same word being used in somewhat dissimilar This is the case with the important subject of my text-FAITH: and few points of doctrine have been more indiscreetly handled than this, from want of attention to the peculiarities of its import in different passages of

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