Christ is said, by the apostle Paul, to "cleanse his church, by the washing of water through the word." And oh! my beloved friends, my soul is filled with an ardent desire, that whatsoever may be our form of worship, whatsoever our name to religion, whatsoever the ceremonies which we practise, or of which we avoid the practice, we may all be baptized under the power of the Lord Almighty, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; that ours may not be a barren, fruitless, speculative religion, but a religion which shall embrace the whole truth as it is in Jesus, and which shall be productive of that new creation, wherein we may serve the Lord our God in the beauty of holiness, and be made meet for the final and full enjoyment of life everlasting for "if any man be in Christ, it is a new creation; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." And we may depend upon it that we cannot live either by the practice of forms, or by the absence of them; "for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation :" and God grant, my beloved friends, that you may all experience this new creation, by being baptized, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, into the name of the Father.

Beloved friends, we often talk of God as if we knew him; we talk of the wonders of creation, we admire the starry firmament, we are astonished at the harmonious courses of planets and of systems, we are lost in the

contemplation of the magnificen, boundless whole; we take the microscope in our hands, and scrutinize the matchless beauties of a feather or a leaf, the mysteries of divine power, and behold it in the formation of the smallest insect; and in the small, as well as the great things of nature, we find that there is a hidden infinity, into which the most perspicacious philosophy cannot dive; and we do acknowledge in words, that the Creator of heaven and earth is an omnipotent, glorious, and incomprehensible being; but for all that, he is hidden from our view, as it relates to all things which pertain to life and salvation; yea, were it not for the light of revealed religion, we should often fail, even in reading the book of nature itself.

We are blind by nature, my brethren, and utterly incapable of understanding God. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." But, beloved friends, when the Spirit of God anoints the blind eye of man's benighted soul, then he begins to understand his Creator; when he reads the book of nature, his mind is filled with something far better than mere philosophical speculation; it is filled with love, with admiration, with awe, and with gratitude: and when he reads the book of revelation, under the influence of that Spirit which gave it forth, his mind opens to a glorious view of the attributes of the Creator of heaven and earth,

his omnipotence, his omnipresence, his spirituality, his omniscience, his oneness; and not only so, but he is made to tremble to the very core, when it is made known to him with power, that God is holy; "Holy, holy, holy art thou, Lord God of Sabaoth."

And like to the knowledge of God is the knowledge of his law; for as God is holy, so the enlightened believer comes to perceive that his law is holy; and as God is spiritual, he perceives that the law of God is spiritual also, and searches the inmost recesses of the heart, brings forth to view the secret springs of action, proves and examines the hidden motives from which actions spring, and judges not only the words and the deeds, but also the thought, the conception, the imagination of the mind. And behold, the awakened eye of the soul now looks up to God the Father, as the moral, as well as the natural governor of the universe; and he comes to understand that, in a future and eternal world, that tendency which is now visible even in the present life to God's perfect retribution, will be completed either in endless suffering, or in endless joy, either in heaven or in hell, my brethren. And the soul of the awakened believer is greatly humbled, when he is thus brought to understand the holiness of God, the holiness of his law, and the retribution of an eternal world; for, together with the knowledge of God, there is given to him a knowledge of himself; and when he compares the dictates of God's law

with his own conduct and conversation, and with the polluted stream of his own corrupt thoughts, he begins to tremble, my brethren, he is amazed, he is lost in an awful sense of the terrors of the unchanging Jehovah, whose holiness never can be abrogated, and whose justice must stand untouched and immaculate for ever and ever.

But, thanks be unto God our Father, this is not the whole of the lesson which we learn, when we are baptized into the name of the Father; for we open the book of Scripture, and under the illumination of that Spirit which gave the scriptures forth, we read the memorable words, "God is love;" words which are in themselves an internal evidence, strong, as the strongest conclusions of reason, to prove the divine authority of the sacred book; for, friends, the natural man, in his own strength, may read the book of nature for ever and ever, and never discover that God is love; but when the soul of man is enlightened by the divine Spirit, and is baptized into the name of the Father, oh then! he is enabled to comprehend and accept the glorious doctrine that "God is love ;" and we ought to be humble in reverent gratitude, for that outward revelation of divine truth by which it is clearly made known to us; and woe will be to us if we do not avail ourselves of this knowledge, that "God is love." So, friends, when we come to be baptized spiritually into the name of the Father, we learn the lesson of his holiness on the one hand, and of his

love on the other. When we read of his holiness, we are assured that sin is unalterably offensive in his view; that he is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity;" that it always was, and always will be, condemned as an abomination by a holy God: and when we read that "God is love," we are by degrees enabled to understand that nevertheless the poor sinner is the object of his mercy; and under the light which is thus poured in upon our souls, we come to be broken and humbled under a sense of the sinfulness of sin, of our own deep unworthiness, and melted down in the view of the mercy of our God; and the fruit of a lively penitence is produced in the mind of the true believer in God the Father.

Where is our penitence, then, friends? where is our broken heart? where is our humiliation? where is our trembling? where is our godly fear? Are you indeed baptized into the name of the Father? Why do ye not then tremble? Why are ye not amazed? Why are ye not broken down under a sense of the terrors of his law? Why are ye not humbled under the blessed tidings that " God is love?" Oh! friends, "except ye repent," said our Saviour, "ye shall all likewise perish."

But, alas! for the poor broken-hearted sinner; how can he reconcile the holiness of God, and the unalterable sentence, that "the soul which sinneth, it shall die ?" how can he reconcile this truth with the hope of mercy? All will be confusion, and all is confusion here, to