heaven, and it is a sure one. If you perish trusting in Christ, you will be the first of the kind. Do you think God would allow any to say, "I trusted in Christ, and yet he deceived me; I cast my soul on him, and he was not strong enough to bear to me?" Oh, do not be afraid, I beseech you.

And I conclude now by noticing that this is an open salvation. Every soul in the world that feels its. need of a Saviour, and that longs to be saved, may come to Christ. If God hath convinced thee of sin, and brought thee to know thy need—come, come away! come, come away! come now; trust now in Christ, and thou shalt now find that blessed are all they that trust in him. The door of mercy does not stand on the jar, it is wide open. The gates of heaven are not merely hanging on the latch, but they are wide open both night and day. Come, let us go together to that blessed house of mercy, and drive our wants away. The grace of Christ is like our street drinking fountains, open to every thirsty wanderer. There is the cup, the cup of faith. .Come and hold it here, while the water freely flows, and drink. There is no one can come up and say it is not made for you; for you can say, “Oh, yes it is, I am a thirsty soul; it is meant for me.' Nay," says the devil, "you are too wicked." No, but this is a free-drinking fountain. It does not say over the top of the fountain, "No thieves to drink here." All that is wanted at the drinking fountain is simply that you should be willing to drink, that you should be thirsty and desire. Come, then,

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"Let not conscience make you linger,

Nor of fitness fondly dream;

All the fitness he requireth,

Is to feel your need of him."

"The

He has given you this; come and drink; drink freely. Spirit and the bride say come; and let him that heareth say .come; and whosoever is athirst let him come, and take the water of life freely."

SERMON VIII.

HOW SAINTS MAY HELP THE DEVIL.

"That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be confounded in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto them."-EZEKIAL xvi. 54.

Ir is not a comfortable state to be at enmity with God, and the sinner knows this. Although he perseveres in his rebellion against the Most High, and turns not at the rebuke of the Almighty, but still goeth on in his iniquity, desperately seeking his own destruction, yet is he aware in his own conscience that he is not in a secure position. Hence, it is, that all wicked men are constantly on the look out for excuses. They find these either in pretended resolutions to reform at some future period, or else in the declaration that reformation is out of their power, and that, acting according to their own nature, they must continue to go on in their iniquities. When a man is willing to find an excuse for being God's enemy, he need never be at a loss. He who hath to find a fact may find some difficulty; but he who would forge a lie may sit at his own fireside and do it. Now, the ex- . cuses of sinners are all of them false; they are refugees of lies; and, therefore, we need not wonder that they are exceedingly numerous, and very easy to come at.

One way in which sinners frequently excuse themselves is by endeavoring to get some apology for their own iniquities from the inconsistencies of God's people. This is the reason why there is so much slander in the world. A true Christian is a rebuke to the sinner; wherever he goes he is a living protest against the evil of sin. Hence, it is, that the worldling makes a dead set

upon a pious inan. His language in his heart is, "He accuses me to my face; I cannot bear the sight of his holy character; it makes the blackness of my own life appear the more terrible, when I see the whiteness of his innocence contrasting with it." And then the worldling opens all his eyes, and labors to find a fault with the virtuous. If, however, he fails to do so, he will next try to invent a fault; he will slander the man; and, if even, there he fails, and the man is like Job, "perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil," then the sinner will, like the devil of old, begin to impute some wrong motive to the Christian's innocency. "Doth Job serve God for naught?" said the devil. He could find no fault with Job whatever; his character was untainted and unblemished; but, says he, "he keeps to his religion for what he gets by it." I reckon it to be a glorious accusation when we are falsely charged with being religious for the sake of gain. It shows that our enemies have no other charge that they can bring against us. They have ransacked all the files of their calumny, and they can find nothing tangible, and this is the last they can bring—an imputation upon the motive of the man who has no other motive in all the world than to glorify his God and win sinners from destruction. In this, then, let us glory. If sinners slander us, it is because we make them uneasy. They see that our lives are a protest against them: and what can they do? They must somehow or other answer the Bill which we have filed against them in Heaven's Chancery, and they do it by issuing a Rejoinder against us, and bringing us in as defendants in the case. We glory in this, that we are defendants who can prove our innocence, and we are not ashamed to stand before the bar of God to have our motives tried. There is much, I say, to cheer us in the fact of such a libel. We know the work is done. We are sure our shots have told on their armor, when they are driven to return on us their calumnies and the venom of their wrath. Now we know that they feel the might of our arm; now we know we are not like them, mere drivelings and dwarfs. They have felt our might, and against it they kick, they foam, they vomit forth their wrath. In this, I say, we glory. We have smitten them hard, or else they would not rise against us in this fashion.

Alas! alas! however, sinners have not always to use calumny and lies. It is too true that the church has given a real bona fide cause to the wicked for excusing themselves in their sin: the inconsistencies of professors, the want of heart in piety, the absence of devout earnestness, have given sad grounds to the ungodly to justify themselves in their sin. It is upon this melancholy subject that I am about to enter this morning; and may God grant unto. all his people who shall feel convicted in their consciences, the spirit of mourning and contrition, that they may vex themselves before God, and confess this great iniquity that they have done, namely, that they have comforted sinners in their sin by their own inconsistency, and have justified the wicked in their rebellion by their own rebellings and revoltings.

This morning I shall deal thus with the subject. First, I shall point out the fact-the different acts of Christians which have helped to comfort sinners in their sin; and then, secondly, I shall observe the consequences of this evil-how much the world at large has been injured by the deeds of professed followers of Christ; and then, I shall come with a solemn warning, bringing out the great battering ram, to dash against these refugees of lies, and moreover, crying with a loud voice to those who are the faithful servants of Christ, to withdraw their hands, and no longer to assist in keeping up the Jericho in which the wicked have entrenched themselves.

I. First, then, it shall be my sad and melancholy business this morning to show certain facts which it were dishonest to deny, namely, that THE ACTS OF MANY OF CHRIST'S FOLLOWERS HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF JUSTIFYING AND COMFORTING SINNERS IN THEIR EVIL WAYS.

1. And first I would observe, that the daily inconsistencies of the people of God have much to do in this matter. By inconsistencies I do not exactly mean those grosser crimes into which, at sad and mournful periods, many professors fall; but I mean those frequent inconsistencies which become so common indeed that they are scarcely condemned by society.

The covetousuess of too many Christians has had this effect. "Look," says the worldling, "this man professes that his inheritance is above, and that his affection is set not on things on earth,

but on the things of heaven; but look at him; he is just as earnest as I am about the things of this world; he can drive the screw home as tightly with his debtor as I can; he can scrape and cut with those that deal with him quite as keenly as ever I have done." Nay, beloved, this is not a mere tale; alas! I have seen persons held up to commendation as successful merchants, whose lives will not bear the test of Scripture, whose business transactions were as hard, as griping, as grasping, as the transactions of the most worldly. How often has it happened that some of you have bent you knee in the sanctuary, and have said, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," and one hour afterwards your finger has been almost meeting your thumb through the jugular vein of some debtor whom you had seized by the throat! The Church of Christ appears to be as worldly as the world itself, and professors of religion have become as sharp in trade and as ungenerous in their dealings as those that have never been baptized into the Lord Jesus, and have never professed to serve him. And now what does the world say? It throws this in our teeth. If it be accused of loving the things of time and sense, it answers, And so do you." If we tell the world that it has set its hopes upon a shadow, it replies, "But we have set our hope upon the self same thing in which you are trusting; you are as worldly, as grasping, as covetous as we are; your protest has lost its force; you are no longer witnesses against us —we are accusers of you.”

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Another point in which the sinner often excuses himself is the . manifest worldliness of many Christians. You will see Christian men and women as fond of dress, and as pleased with the frivolities of the age, as any other persons possibly could be; just as anxious to adorn their outward person, so as to be seen of men; just as ambitious to win the praise which fools accord to fine dressing, as the most silly fop or the most gaudy among worldly women. What saith the world, when we turn round to it, and accuse it of being a mere butterfly, and finding all its pleasures in gaudy toys? "Oh! yes," it says, we know your cant, but it is just the same with you. Do you not stand up and sing,

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"Jewels to me are gaudy toys,

And gold but sordid dust ?"