merly quoted, Mr Sandeman, "holds pace, first and last, with the work and labour of love. If love cools, hope languishes. If the former be fervent, so is the latter." This proceeds upon the principle, that the practical exercise of love is the evidence of the legitimacy of hope. I grant it to be true. But did this writer (acute, and scornfully dogmatical, but not always consistent,) not perceive, that, as hope bears proportion to love, so does love bear proportion to faith-so that, while it is true that "as love cools hope languishes," it is not less true, that as faith declines, love cools. "Faith," the apostle says, "worketh by love." If it be so, the "work of faith," and the "labour of love" must always bear an exact relation to each other. The labour of love, indeed, is just one important department of the work of faith. The labour of love, then, it will be perceived, is the evidence alike of faith and of hope,—of the reality of the one, and the legitimacy of the other. It must consequently be the measure of both. Wherever, therefore, there is the assurance of faith, there will be the greatest degree of the labour of love : -but, the labour of love being the evidence of the legitimacy of hope, when there is the greatest degree of this evidence there must be the greatest degree of the hope. If hope be proportioned to love, and love

be proportioned to faith, then must the two extremes be proportionals also, on the axiomatic principle, that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. There cannot, therefore, be the assurance of faith independently of the assurance of hope. Where there is one, there must be the other.

To me it appears a misapprehension of the Apostle's meaning in Heb. vi. 11, "We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence, to the full assurance of hope unto the end;" when he is understood as holding forth this “assurance of hope" as the object of future and ultimate attainment by a certain course of preparatory diligence. The words are evidently capable of being addressed to persons who were at the time in the full enjoyment of it; the exhortation being designed to excite them to diligence in Christian duty, not in order to the acquiring, but to the maintaining, of the desired assurance.-I think I might go farther. The latter seems to be the only meaning of which the words are fairly susceptible. The expression "unto the end" fixes them to this interpretation. Had the exhortation been that they should "show the same diligence, to the full assurance of hope," we might have regarded this assurance as a point which they had not yet attained, but which they were to strive to reach by the prescribed process of diligence in "the work and labour of love." But as it stands,-" that every one of you do show the same diligence, to the

full assurance of hope unto the end," this explanation will not do. Was it an object which they were to pursue "unto the end," and not to reach till the end? Assuredly not. And if not, what else can be the meaning, but that by the continuance and increase of their activity in duty, they were to retain, in growing stability, that assurance of which they were already in possession ? This accords with other expressions, which, in different words, convey a similar sentiment: such as chap. iii. 6, “But Christ, as a Son over his own house; whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end:"-and chap. iii. 14, "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence" (that from which our confidence first arose, and the confidence itself arising from it) "firm unto the end." I should he disposed to call these parallel passages to the other; in which, after having assured them that God was not unrighteous to forget their work and labour of love, which they had showed toward his Name," he admonishes them to persist in the same course of holy devotedness and benevolent activity, that so they might enjoy unto the end a well-founded and animating confidence of the legitimacy of their hopes.

From all this it must be evident, and the inference is one of practical importance, that if we are desirous of enjoying the "full assurance of hope," our

prayer should ever be, "Lord, increase our faith !". faith being the spring of hope, and the germ of all those practical virtues of the Christian character, which are the active indications of the soul's spiritual life, of the possession of interest in Christ, and of the vital principles and divinely warranted hopes of life eternal.

PROPOSITION IV.

THE SAME THINGS FROM WHICH THIS KNOWLEDGE IS SCRIPTURALLY DERIVED, SERVE TO ESTABLISH FAITH, AND TO KEEP BELIEVERS CLEAVING TO CHRIST.

This is obviously the meaning of the last clause of our text:-"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." It were surely a waste of words, to prove that this, being addressed to persons who are described in the very verse as already believing, can signify nothing else than that their faith might be established, that they might continue to believe,—that they might hold fast, and that with an increasingly resolute adherence, their faith in the name of the Son of God.

It was the Apostle's double purpose, at once to assure them that the testimony which they had re

ceived, and in which they stood, was indeed THE GOSPEL, in opposition to all the corruptions of it which were broached by false teachers, and by which their souls were in danger of being subverted; and at the same time, to lead them to such a personal experimental evidence of the truth, as should effectually fortify their minds against the plausibilities of antichristian deceivers, and attach them to the "simplicity that is in Christ."-In the "things which he had written," he had given them directions how they were to distinguish between the doctrines of true and false pretenders to inspired authority; and he had pointed out to them the influence upon themselves, by which the true doctrine evinced itself to be from God,-the manner in which it "effectually wrought in them who believed it:"—and he had given them his instructions on both these subjects, with the view that, by a right apprehension of the truth itself, by a due appreciation of the value of the blessings connected with it, and by a growing experience of its present saving and life-giving power, they might be established in their attachment to the Saviour, and determined on steadfast perseverancethat so they might prove themselves "not of them who go back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul."

It is not my purpose to enlarge on the illustration of this proposition; such extended illustration not being necessary to the more immediate object of the present