for the love both of truth and of the world. Yet the one is an attribute of God, while the love of the other is opposite to the love of God. "If any man love the world," says an apostle, "the love of the Father is not in him." He may like the transcript of truth, and of many other virtues on the face of the creature, but he likes not the Creator. He can gaze, and that even with rapture on the partial and imperfect sketches of the unfinished copy, but he shrinks from the view of the entire original. He can hold the intercourse of wistful thoughts, and fervent aspiration, with the absent object of his earthly regard, but he has neither, taste nor capacity for com. munion with his Father in heaven. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," is the anthem of the celestial, but theirs is a delight which he cannot share in. And as surely as his body would need to be transformed, ere it could cease to have pain amid the agonies of hell,-so surely would his mind need to be transformed, ere it ceased to feel a confinement and an irksomeness amid the halleluiahs of paradise.

Even though man, then, had in his heart a nascent affection for the character of God, this would be restrained from passing onwards to an affection for his person, by a sense of guilt, and the consequent dread of God as an enemy. Nor could the love of God be inserted in his bosom, till by faith in the expiation of the gospel, that which letteth was taken out of the way. But still more, if, in conformity to our present argument, there be no such nascent affection for the Divine character, is it hopeless to attempt the establishment of love antecedently to belief, or that attachment should take possession of the heart, ere fear takes its departure away from it. Even if by the working of some power unknown in the human constitution, or by some effort, the success of which has never yet, in a single instance, been experienced, there could be made to arise in the soul, the love of holiness, previous to the act of trusting in the offered Saviour, a terror at God, which, in the absence of this trust, is the instinctive and universal feeling of nature, would just as effectually repress the love of holiness, as it does the love of truth, or of compassion, or of justice, from carrying us onwards to a regard for the person of the Godhead. To put the love of God's character into a heart not yet brought into enlargement by the faith of the gospel, would just be to put it into a prison-hold, and there to chain it down to a fruitlessness and inactivity, where it would be wholly unproductive of love to God himself. Confidence must take the precedency of this love, even in a bosom already furnished with the preparatory elements of affection; and how much more essential then is it, that it should take the precedency in a bosom, where these elements are altogether wanting? Faith is thus more strongly evinced to be a thing of prior and indispensable necessity. Without it, even the seed of any precious affection for the Godhead, stifled in embryo, would not blow into luxuriance. And if our nature be such a wilderness that no seed is there, if the thing wanted be the germination of a new principle, and not the developement of an old, if it be by a creative and not by a mere fostering process, that we are transformed into a meetness for heaven, if the agency that is made to bear upon the human soul, must have a power to regenerate as well as to repair,-and if the promise of this agency be given only to those who believe, then let us no more linger, or be bewildered, in that abyss of helplessness from which faith alone can extricate the inquirer,--let us no longer arrest the eye of confidence from that demonstration of good will, which is held out to the most widely alienated of sinners, but hasten to place ourselves, even now, on that foundation of trust, where alone we are made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus, and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.

"Destroy this temple," says the Saviour, " and I will raise it up again in three days." It is there alone that we can be. hold the beauty of the Lord and be safe. This place of greatest security, is also the place of chiefest glory. It is when admitted into this greater and more perfect tabernacle, that we can look on majesty without terror, and on holiness without an overwhelming sense of condemnation. The sinner encircled in mercy looks in tranquil contemplation on all that is awful and venerable in the character of the Godhead, and never do truth, and righteousness, and purity, appear in loftier exhibition before him, than, when withheld from his own person, he sees

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the whole burden of their avenging laid upon the head of the great Sacrifice.

"One thing have I desired of the Lord," says the Psalmist, "that I may dwell in the courts of the Lord, all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple." It is not till we are within the portals of the place of ref. uge that this desire can obtain its fulfilment. Selfishness may have originated the movement which took us there. The fear of the coming wrath may have lent celerity to our footsteps. A joyful sense of deliverance may have been felt, ere the glories of the divine character were seen in bright and convincing manifestation. The love of gratitude may have kindled within us, and, with the Psamilst, we may have to seek, and to enquire, and to have daily exercise and meditation, ere the love of moral esteem has attained the place of ascendency which belongs to it. Nevertheless, the chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever. This is the real destination of every individual who is redeemed from among men. This should be the main object of all his prayers, and all his preparations. It is this which fits him for the company of heaven ; and unless there be a growing taste for God, in the glories of his excellency, -for God, in the beauties of his holiness, there is no ripening, and no perfecting, for the mansions of immortality. Though you have to combat, then, with the sluggishness of sense, and with the real aversion of nature to every spiritual exercise, you must attempt, and stenuously cultivate, the habit of communion with God. And as no man knoweth the Father save the Son reveal him, and as it is by the Spirit that Christ gives light to those who believe in him ;-for the attainment of this great moral and spiritual accomplishment, do what the Apostle directs you, when he says, "Keep yourselves in the love of God, by praying in the Holy Ghost." Your first en. deavours may be feeble, and fatiguing, and fruitless. But God will not despise the day of small things, nor will the light of his countenance be always withheld from those who aspire after it,-nor will the soul that thirsts after God, be left for ever un.

satisfied, and the life and peace of being spiritually minded, will come in rich experience to his feelings, and the whole habit of his tastes and enjoyments, will be in diametric opposition to that of the children of the world,----God being the habitation to which he resorts continually,--God being the strength of his heart, and his portion for evermore.

SERMON XII.

THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE.

JOHN v. 24.

"But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you."

WHEN it is said, in a former verse of the gospel, that Jesus knew what was in man, we feel, that it is a tribute of acknowledgment, rendered to his superior insight, into the secrecies of our constitution. It was not the mere faculty of perceiving what lay before him, that was ascribed to him by the Evangelist. It was the faculty of perceiving what lay disguised under a semblance, that would have imposed on the understanding of other men. It was the faculty of detecting. It was a discerning of the spirit, and that not through the transparency of such unequivocal symptoms, as brought its character clearly home to the view of the observer. But it was a discerning of the spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, to an ordinary spectator, was a thick and impenetrable hiding place. It was a dicovery there of the real posture and habitude of the soul. It was a searching of it out, through all the recesses of duplicity, winding and counterwinding in such a way, as to elude altogether the eye of common acquaintanceship. It was the assigning to it of one attribute, at the time when it wore the guise of another attribute,-of utter antipathy to the nature and design of his mission, at the very time that multitudes were drawn around him, by the fame of his miracles, of utter indifference about God, at the very time that they zealously asserted the sanctity of his sabbaths, and resented as blasphemous, whatever they felt to be an usurpation of the greatness which belonged to him only.

It was in the exercise of this faculty, that Jesus came forward