tracts his notice, their helplessness draws his attention, and for them he puts forth all his pastoral kindness and skill. Consider also, that when Jesus Christ begins a good work he will carry it on to perfection. You have all the infinite resources of the Holy Spirit to depend upon, and to draw from. Exceeding great and precious promises, which are all yea and amen in Christ Jesus, are continually speaking encouragement to you from God. And behold in the church around you, professors gray in the service of the Lord, who were once young and trembling as you now are, but who have been kept through all the duties, the difficulties, and the temptations of perhaps forty or fifty years;—and if you look into the unseen world, there are millions round the throne, who have been kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. The faithful love, and all-sufficient grace which have kept them can, and will keep you. With these considerations " go

on your way rejoicing."*

* Many of the particulars summarily expressed in this chapter will be amplified in the subsequent parts of the book.

CHAPTER V.

AN ATTEMPT TO COMPARE THE PRESENT GENERATION OF PROFESSORS WITH OTHERS THAT HAVE PRECEDED THEM.

"SAY not thou," says the wise man, "what is the cause that the former days were better than these, for thou dost not wisely inquire concerning this."Eccles. vii. 10. This language could not have intended such comparisons as are cautiously made for the sake of promoting improvement, but only such as are peevishly instituted to cherish discontent, and to justify misanthropy. It has been common for good men of every age to complain of the degeneracy of their times, both as regards the world and the church. "Had it all along been true, it is impossible to conceive, bad as the world is, how much worse it must have been. The truth is we are on many accounts exceedingly incompetent judges.There is much difficulty in taking a comparative view that shall be sufficiently comprehensive and impartial of our own and other times. We are ex

tremely apt to confine our estimate to particular descriptions of character and deportments of conduct, which happen, whether from accidental circumstances, or from our peculiar mental temperament, to have more particularly attracted our attention and impressed our minds, and to overlook the endless variety of modifications and aspects under which

the corruption of our nature displays itself; to forget that in human society, there is a fashion in morality, as there is in every thing else, of which it is the very essence to fluctuate and to show in successive periods capricious and changeful predilections; that religion and virtue, though declining in the quarter of the country which forms the immediate sphere of our observation, may be reviving and and making progress in another; that when the prevalence of any particular vice has been the occasion of suffering to ourselves, we naturally feel and speak strongly under the irritation of self-love, magnifying to our imagination, both the intrinsic enormity of the evil and the extent to which it is practised. So much do these and other causes affect the judgment, that two persons, differing in circumstances and in mental constitution and moral sentiment, shall produce from the very same scene of life and manners, descriptions so unlike each other, as that we shall be at a loss to believe the identity of the subject; just as two painters, following each his own taste and fancy, may, from the same assortment of objects, by variety of grouping and arrangements, by the different degrees of retirement or of prominence given to each, and by their opposite styles of colouring and shadowing, present us with two pictures so totally dissimilar, as that we may look long and narrowly ere we discover the points of coincidence."*

These remarks so true and so wise, should impose caution on any one who attempts to institute a comparison between his own generation of professors, and those that have gone before. But still most ages have some features so broad, and so deeply

* Dr. Wardlaw on Eccles. vol. 1, page 345.

marked, that any man with even moderate sagacity and impartiality, may venture to pronounce upon them. In speaking FIRST of the EXCELLENCIES of the present race of professors as compared with some that have preceded it, I may venture to mention as no unimportant or undistinguished one, a more marked and decided tone of religious sentiment; a more public and explicit avowal of evangelical doctrine. I do not mean merely a belief in the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead, and the great fundamental truth of the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ; but in connection with these, the allimportant doctrines of justification by faith alone, and the regeneration of the heart by the Holy Spirit. These are now not only held by the great body of orthodox Dissenters, and Wesleyan Methodists, but by a large proportion of the clergy of the church of England; and are put forward without hesitation or reserve, in bold and striking relief in their preaching. From the Restoration till within the past twenty years, these glorious and fundamental truths lay enshrined in most churches in the prayer-books of the Establishment; but they have now obtained a resurrection from the desk, and an ascension into the pulpit, from whence they are exhibited and preached with divine success. A life-giving system of doctrine has taken the place of a dead theology and a cold morality and the sentiments of Wickliffe, Cranmer, Hooper, and Ridley, are again heard in the scenes which formerly resounded with their voices. As to the Dissenters, a clear bright effulgence of the truth has broken forth from that cloudy divinity, which at one time too extensively prevailed, and seemed rather intended to conceal, than to reveal the Sun of Righteousness. It must be admitted that a century ago there was a vagueness of senti

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ment among many of the non-conformist ministers; evangelical doctrines were merged in devotional feeling; the trumpet gave an uncertain sound from a number of their pulpits; and m, ny of the people knew neither their own opinions n those of their pastors on the person of Christ, or the work of the Spirit. Arianism or Sabellianism threw a dark cold shadow over many of our churches, in which piety drooped and zeal lived not at all. But the age of indifference and latitudinarianism is past: a zeal for the truth as it is in Jesus has sprung up; vague theological generalities have given place to definite Christian sentiments: no pastor is received, no preacher is heard, no member admitted to our fellowship whose orthodoxy is suspected. Confession both of evangelical doctrines and their vital influence upon the heart, is required of all who take the oversight, or enter into the communion of our churches. It is delightful also to notice with how much greater clearness and precision the doctrines of grace, as they are called, are now put forth from the pulpit and the press, than they were at one time when enveloped in the clouds of those systems of theology which border so closely on Antimonianism. The writings of Williams, and Fuller, and Scott, and Wardlaw, have caused the truth to be seen in its own pure bright light, and delivered multitudes from the iron fetters of a hard, cold, and merciless theology.

Our land is vocal with the joyful sound of the preaching of Christ crucified, calling the dense population of our cities and great towns, and the inhabitants of our smaller towns and villages to the Cross for salvation. The Church, and the Meetinghouse echo to each other the name that is above every name, and the worshippers of both commingle