unvillingness, and the moral incapacity of the mind for serious thought: for conscience has been resisted, impressions have been stifled, convictions have been disregarded, appeals have been brought again and again to the mind; judicial hardness of heart may be apprehended; God may say, "He is joined to his idols, let him alone." "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." We often hear most fearful instances of those who have heard the Gospel, its invitations, its warnings, its appeals, and have said, "To-morrow I will think on the subject; to-morrow I will pay attention to the great concerns of my soul." To-morrow has found them in eternity, with all their sins unpardoned, their guilt uncancelled, their hearts unrenewed, and the last link in the chain has bound them to the bottomless pit for ever. Oh, my dear young friends, if there be one feeling more than another I am anxious this night to guard you against, it is the feeling of delay, the feeling of procrastination, the putting off to a more convenient season the great concerns of eternity!

There are two classes before me; there are decided enemies to God. I know there are in this assembly to-night decided enemies: and you will go this night from the house of God, and you will ridicule what you have heard, and you will try to fortify your own minds, and the minds of your deluded companions and associates in your hardness, in your indifference, in your infidelity; and you will call it priestcraft, and a cunningly-devised fable. And you are approving your decision. Yes; I know you are approving your decision, by your indifference, by your sensuality, by your disregard to all the dictates of conscience, by your contempt of the word of God, by your profanation of his Sabbaths, by the obduracy of your minds, by the profaneness of your speech, by the licentiousness of your thoughts, by the criminality of your indulgences. You are on the side of Baal; you are against God-doubting his power, despising his word, perhaps, brought to the dreadful, impious hardihood of denying his existence. And yet, if you have not arrived at that awful and fatal obduracy, you may profess that you know God, while in works you are denying him. Oh, this is awful! There can be no doubt about your characters, about your impiety, about your irreligion. You may come now and then to the sanctuary as a matter of occasional compliance with old customs, because some neighbours or friends have persuaded you to come, and pass an hour of the wearisome Sabbath, when you are forbidden to pursue your customary business, or to enjoy your customary indulgences. You may come, perhaps, impelled by curiosity, and some may have come from worse motives still, which I will not pretend to describe. But, remember, there is a day of reckoning; there is a period of solemn inspection which you cannot pass by, which you cannot avoid: there is a scrutiny to which you must submit. You must contend with the last enemy; you must meet the King of Terrors; you must pass through the valley of the shadow of death. You may try to forget it, but you cannot escape it. Now, will your principles stand that test? Will your indifference bear that scrutiny? Will your decision against God support you then? Oh! suffer, I beseech you, one word of inquiry, one word of appeal; it may be to some of you the very last you shall ever have. "How shall you escape if you neglect so great a salvation?" If we neglect so great salvation, there re na neth no more sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of judgment and fieri. dignation, which shall devour the adversaries.' But I am addressing deciura friends, as well as decided enemies. I know there are those before me who are prepared to avow themselves on the side of

God, and who rejoice in every opportunity of evincing their decision; who glory in the cross of Christ, who account all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. You have fled to the refuge of mercy; you have received the truth in the love of it: the Bible is your chosen guide, prayer your highest privilege, the Sabbath the best day of all the seven: working for God in the communication of religious instruction to the young, in visits of mercy to the afflicted, is a source of enjoyment to you. You have felt the value of your own souls, and therefore can feel for the souls of others: you have felt the preciousness of Christ yourselves, and therefore have recommended the salvation of the gospel to others. You were once ignorant, but the gospel has been your wisdom; you were once guilty, but in Christ you have found salvation; you were once unholy, but in him you have found sanctification, in him you have found righteousness, in him you have found acceptance with God; and you dare not exchange the hope of the gospel, and the consolations of that hope, for ten thousand worlds. You feel happy in the service of God; you rejoice in the presence of God; and you are saying, “We yield ourselves to thee: to whom can we go, Divine Redeemer, but to thee? thou hast the words of eternal life." My dear friends; I congratulate you on the choice which grace has enabled you to make. I call upon you to walk humbly with God; to walk humbly before him, like Joshua and Caleb, of whom it is said, "They followed the Lord fully." Make the Bible your constant guide: seek the direction of its sacred pages; obgy the Spirit's holy impulses: you are not to grieve that Divine Agent, by which alone you can be sealed to the day of redemption. Be concerned to preserve the sensibilities of your consciences unimpaired. Guard against the fascinations of error and the corruptions of the world. Remember the importance of closet devotion, retired religion, private communion with heaven. Be concerned to regard continually the voice of conscience, and to obey the truth of God in his own word; and thus be on the Lord's side. afraid of sinful companionships; form no sinful engagements and connexions; none in which you cannot ask and expect the blessing of God. Abstain from all appearance of evil; not only the reality, but even the semblance of it; abstain from the scenes of forbidden amusements and unholy gratification: and be decided for God, though fools may deride your choice, and though the world may condemn you. Thus approve the reality, and thus illustrate the excellency, of pure and undefiled religion.

Be

Are there any still undecided, halting, neutral, hesitating? My young friends, look at the objects I have contrasted; contrast the principles I have endeavoured to illustrate and apply. Go, I beseech you, this night, from the sanctuary to the scene of private retirement: bow at the footstool of divine mercy and implore the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Oh, if there is one young person before me to-night, who has never yet, for one single hour in his life, retired for the very purpose of thought and examination and prayer, I beseech you let this night witness it. Look at the consequences which may follow this night's decision. Are you prepared to say to the world "Thou art my portion;" to pleasure, "Thou art my.god;" to wealth, "Thou art the object of my trust;' to the authority of the world" In that I will rest?" Or are you prepared to say, "Thou art my God, and I will praise thee; thou art my God, and I will exalt thee. Other lords have had dominion over me; but henceforth I will be called by thy name?" "Seek the Lord while he is to be found; call upon him while he is near."-Amen.

APOSTACY FROM GOD,

REV. T. J. HOLLOWAY, D. D.

FITZROY CHAPEL, FITZROY SQUARE, JANUARY 12, 1534.

"From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." JOHN, vi. 66.

To go back from Christ, and to walk no more with him, are departures from God which amount to final apostacy. But all declensions and decays in religion are departures from God; therefore there are departures from God which are not apostacy. We read in the Scriptures, in reference to the people of God, of many of their departures from God: their decays in religion, yea, and their falls, were great, sufficient to read out to us the importance of that scriptural admonition, "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." For great and excellent as were those men whose history is thus recorded, their departures were great; they went to great lengths; but, nevertheless, we find that their souls were restored, they returned back to God, because it was utterly impossible that they could perish. They belonged to the church of Christ; and we read in the Scriptures, that the church is the body of Christ; and there is no part or member of his body that can see corruption. Hence our Lord says, in the tenth chapter of this same gospel, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand."

When, therefore, we speak of apostacy, we do not intend the departures or declinations of the people of God; but when we read, as we do in the chapter before us, of a people who call themselves, and who also fancied themselves, to be the people of God, of whom it is testified that they ultimately became apos tates, does it not stir up a spirit of jealousy in the breast of every one who is among the real people of God, to look well to his evidences, to search and to try (especially on some dark and gloomy day when his backslidings may be reproving him,) to examine and see whether his spots be the spots of God's children; that in the midst of his sorrow he may not be destitute of strong consolation; that he may not sorrow as those without hope; that he may not be driven in his darkness to despair. For while nothing is more to be deprecated than decays in religion, nothing more to be lamented than the departures of the people of God from a close and a holy walk with him, yet, nevertheless, nothing is more unscriptural than for a brother to contemn such; nothing more contrary to the mind and the spirit of Christ, than for a brother to turn away from such. It is rather his duty to strive to heal the breach, and to bring him back, in order that the soul of such an one may be raised again to the

favour of God. In this the instruction of the Apostle St. Paul is clear. Galatians, vi. 1: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Here is a word of instruction, together with a caution. The Apostle exhorts all spiritual men to restore a brother who may have been overtaken in a fault, and to do it in the spirit of meekness; adding to that a caution, which is calculated to stimulate them to a faithful discharge of their duty: "Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." If then your brother has been tempted, if he has, through surprise and temptation been guilty of a fault, your duty is to restore such an one, to pray for him, to pray with him, to counsel him, to comfort and encourage him to return, "considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." For it is "by faith we stand;" and it is by the mighty power of God's grace in that faith, that we are upheld. But if you give way to an unchristian spirit in reference to those who have fallen, take heed lest the hand that upheld thee be withdrawn for a time, and thou be tempted and fall likewise; considering that thou art exposed to the same temptations and the same dangers, "Bear ye one another's burdens," being assured of this, that his fall is a burden to him; bear with him, "and so fulfil the law of Christ," which is the law of love. Remember what Christ has done for thee, and what he is daily working in thee, and doing by thee: fulfil the law of love.

But the subject that we have in hand does not bear upon the people of God, or upon their declensions or decays in religion; it comes before us in a most solemn character, pointing out those who fancied that they were the people of God, they who to all appearance were the people of God, and who yet became apostates from God. Does not this subject therefore awaken within us an anxious enquiry, if peradventure we may ascertain what it is that designates those who may be apparently disciples, and yet after all fall away and perish? For it is worthy of remark, that the persons mentioned in the text were disciples, as contra-distinguished from the unbelieving Jews; they were the disciples of Christ: "From that time many of his disciples went back :" and they went back not for a time or a season, but they renounced the faith of Christ altogether, " and walked no more with him."

Now it is in no way surprising, beloved brethren, that the worldly-minded man, or the sensualist, or the sons and daughters of pride and dissipation and of a vain mind, should refuse to receive the testimony of God's truth, and affect to disbelieve it; it is no wonder that they should become infidels, or sceptics, or Socinians: there is in this no matter of surprise; because, if they once admit the truth of God's word, and if they give the length and the breadth that it occupies to the volume of inspiration, they are shut up to this alternative-they must either condemn themselves in the things which they allow, or else they must cast away their idols to the moles and to the bats, which idols they love better than they love God himself. Yes, it is a fact, that they barter the favour of God to the love of their idols; the sensualist for his appetites, the worldling for worldly pleasure, the vain and the gay for vanity and pleasure. It is no wonder, therefore, that such attempt to put aside the truth and affect to neglect and despise it. For instance, we are not surprised when we hear, as it is recorded in this chapter, of unbelieving Jews gainsaying and contradicting, calling on Christ for a sign, and at times threatening to stone him: it is no matter of surprise that the Scribes and Pharisees should set their faces against Christ,

because he denounced their principles, and exposed them as hypocrites: "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites:" it is no wonder that those should have rejected Christ; but that there should be among them some who became his disciples, braving the Jewish hierarchy, and even hazarding the being turned out of the synagogue, that they should join themselves unto Christ, that they should be taught by him, and that they should profess his faith, and yet, after all, that they should go back and walk no more with him-this is a point of solemn consideration; and to reconcile this with the grace of God the Father, and to understand the fact, is important to every reflecting mind. For here it appears to a demonstration, that a man may be a disciple of Christ, may be taught of Christ, may be so divinely taught that he may be taught of God, (inasmuch as all his knowledge and all his faith is derived from the word of God,) he may be a disciple, and yet not a believing disciple.

Now as we before observed, it is utterly impossible that a true believer, who is also a disciple of Christ, can ever fall away, and ultimately perish. If the word of God be true, (which it is,) the eternally perishing of any one true believer is a matter of impossibility; and yet mention is made here, you perceive, of disciples who heard, and were taught, and walked with Christ, and yet a time came when they went back and walked no more with him.

Now, in order to clear up this point, let us examine some of the characteristic marks of such disciples. This will be calculated to read out a lesson of warning to the worldly and the careless, the superficial and the inconsistent ; whilst it will also lead the true believer to a source of unutterable consolation. In order that we may come at this fact, let us here, in the first place, enquire what are the causes of going back in those who are reputed disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ; and then, in the second place, endeavour to trace some of the marks and evidences which characterize those who are his.

In the first place, then, WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF GOING BACK IN THOSE WHO ARE REPUTED DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. This you may glean from the discourse which Jesus Christ has just now been holding forth to his disciples who surrounded him. In the words of the text, the Apostle John observes, "From that time”—from the time that Christ broached those sentiments, from the time he opened to them those truths, and let them a little more into the nature of his kingdom-" from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." In the former part of this chapter you will find, that a question had been submitted to Christ by the unbelieving Jews to this effect: "What shall we do to work the works of God?" This was the cause of the subsequent discourse, "What shall we do that we might work the works of God?" Or, in other words, "What shall we do that we might inherit eternal life?" In answer to this Jesus Christ sets before them the very first principles of his salvation; he leads them to the very first principles of life, to the avenue to the way, to the very door of access, through which man alone can find his way to the Father; that principle without which every thing else is nothing worth. Every prayer that is offered up, the communion that we hold with God in public or private, every action, every word, every deed, will all take its character from that principle; for if we be not actuated by that pure principle, which lies at the very foundation of the Christian fabric, then, beloved brethren, according to one of the articles of our church, "Lust hath of itself the nature of sin." Christ cleared up that point, in the next verse: "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”