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plainest and most necessary duties we have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. On whatever point we examine ourselves, we shall find ourselves to be unprofitable servants. We revolt from the very idea of denying God, and yet the most casual self-examination must convince us, that we have continually in thought and deed fallen into a virtual denial of him. "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" May the conviction of our sinfulness be made to every one of us a conviction of our need of a Saviour! And, satisfied that of ourselves we can do nothing, may we avail ourselves of the perfect work of Him who died for us!

A careful examination of this subject tends to convince of sin. My brethren, it also supplies us with a powerful motive for gratitude. God has kept us from an open denial of him. We have hitherto been preserved from that miserable folly. We

We are,

are publicly acknowledging him. by assembling in this place, professing to believe what the fool denies. "By the

If we

grace of God we are what we are.” are habitually worshipping him in spirit and in truth, great indeed must be our gratitude, that he has of his free grace caused us to differ from a world that lieth in wickedness: we must feel his love constraining us to devote to him our body and our spirit which are his. Our gratitude is due for outward privileges. But, oh! may we never be satisfied with merely drawing nigh to God with our mouth, and honouring him with our lips, while our heart is far from him!

SERMON XXIV.

THE CHRISTIAN CONTEST.

1 COR. ix. 24-27.

"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all,

but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway."

I HAVE taken the whole of this passage as my text, not as intending to enter upon a minute exposition, or at all expecting even to notice all its parts, in the short time it is my practice to address you; but as wishing to bring out the leading ideas of the

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Apostle, who, it is not too much to say, does in this place lay before us one of the most striking illustrations of the Christian life which is to be found in the whole compass of the sacred volume.

The attentive reader of the Scriptures continually meets with internal evidence of the truth of the book which is the object of his study, much more than strong enough to silence the objections suggested by the Tempter, and the doubts that are the spontaneous growth of an evil heart of unbelief. The least educated person, who is reading the sacred book with an honest mind and a spirit of prayer, from time to time meets with, and observes, the most satisfactory proofs that he is perusing the word of God. But the greater our acquaintance with human learning, the more frequently shall we meet with, and the better shall we be able to appreciate, the particular kind of evidence to which I now refer. The various books of the New Testament profess to have been written at a certain period, within the half century which followed the crucifixion of Jesus.

We have extensive means of knowing the state of the world at that particular period. We have large remains of the literatures of the most civilized nations; we have a great mass of historical information; the geographical divisions are well ascertained, and the study of antiquities, which has been so zealously cultivated, has brought within the reach of the scholar an acquaintance with the most minute details of private life. The New Testament has been submitted to the test of this accumulated knowledge, and the application has but tended to establish its claims. When any of its books are critically examined, they are found to be just what, if we suppose they were written at the period to which they are assigned, and by the persons to whom they are ascribed, they must have been. The circumstances of time, and

place, and allusion, and language, all bear the same testimony; and many of these circumstances have been remarked, so minute and delicate, that it is quite safe to assert that they could not have occurred in the composition of a writer who was

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