at home and abroad, are in their hands, and dependent entirely on their social zeal and their combined efforts; and wonders Let may yet be done, such as will put all their fears to shame. them appear on the wall, not with the trowel in the one hand and the weapon of strife in the other, but with both hands and all hearts intent on the work; and the desolations of the spiritual Jerusalem may speedily be repaired, and the "city of the living God" rise, in all her heavenly loveliness and splendour, to the admiring view of men and angels. As to those friends of our own Establishment, who are ever boding evil, and uttering their timid alarms, as if all that pertained to their loved and venerated Church must come to ruin, were the support of the State withdrawn,—they are gratuitous calumniators, not of others, but My firm conviction is, of themselves, I discredit the calumny.

that there is enough of vital Christianity in the Church of Scotland, which, with all its corruption, contains so many of the excellent and the most excellent of the earth, to preserve all that is worth preserving, and even to add indefinitely to its amount: --and that, if all invidious distinctions of church and dissent were done away, and believers of all denominations were, in their several departments, with one heart and one soul, to put forth their efforts with a primitive zeal, for the evangelization of our country, there would not, in a very short time, be one spot of spiritual All such fears are the fears either darkness found on its surface. of distrustful unbelief, or of an unworthily low estimate of Christian duty and Christian resources; an estimate which is, in part at least, the result of that reduced average of religious profession and character, which has all along been the unavoidable effect of national Christianity. All the connexions of the religion of Christ with the State have proved debasing to her character, and prejudicial to her interests. They have marred her beauty; they have dimmed her glory; they have numbed, with torpedo touch, her vital energies. Instead of accelerating her triumphant career, they have entangled and retarded it; they have “taken off her chariot-wheels, that she has driven heavily;" they have spoiled the ethereal temper, and turned the keen edge of her weapons of victory:—and but for such unhappy impediments, her conquests would, long ere this time, have subjugated the globe to the sceptre of the Redeemer's reign.

let

With such views as these of the importance of our principles, who can wonder that we should be solicitous to diffuse them? If they are Scriptural, let them be embraced; if unscriptural, them be refuted. The only kind of dissent of which the man who "trembles at the word of the Lord" will dread the imputa

tion, is dissent from "the prophets and apostles of the Lamb." If we are found in agreement with those "holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," we must be content to bear, as a part of our cross, the calumnious association of our names with those of Socinians, and infidels, and anarchists. When men whom we esteem and love join in the groundless imputation of such unhallowed alliance, we feel the wrong; but we feel it the less, because, with not a few, we believe it to be the result, not of temper and of personal ill-will, but of mistaken principle. So far from cherishing feelings of affinity to those with whom we have been slanderously leagued,—it is because we desire the more rapid advancement, in its simplicity, purity, and saving power, of that blessed Truth, of which Socinians, and infidels, and anarchists are the avowed enemies, that we seek, individually and unitedly, the dissemination of those sentiments respecting the spirituality of Christ's kingdom which we have this evening been advocating ;-entertaining, as we do, the settled conviction, that it is only when Christianity shall be emancipated from the bondage, and purified from the secularizing influence, of political associations, that she can pursue successfully her career of promised victory, till "the kingdoms of this world shall become our Lord's and his Christ's!"

Motives, then, and those who judge them, I leave alike to the omniscient and impartial tribunal of the Searcher of hearts; merely reminding both friends and opponents, but reminding them of it with all solemnity, how "light a thing it is to be judged of one another or of man's judgment :-He that judgeth us is the Lord!'*-Be it the solicitude of every one of us, to pursue such a course, and, in pursuing it, to be consciously influenced by such principles, as that we may give our account at last “with joy and not with grief!"

Long as I have already detained you, I feel as if I should have on my conscience a reflection of unfaithfulness to my ministerial trust, were I to allow such an audience to retire, without one word at least-and it can be no more—of personal admonition. Allow me, then, to remind each one of my hearers, that, important as the questions are which we have this evening been discussing, there is one which, to themselves individually, is of incomparably weightier interest. It is the question of their own spiritual state;-the question, not to what Church they have been added, but whether they have been "added unto the Lord!" A man may be either a Churchman or a Dissenter

* 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4.

without being a Christian; and, if he is not a Christian, what avails it which? Vast as has been the amount of spiritual self-deception which the nationalizing of Christianity has produced, let me not be understood to mean that the delusion of nominal religion is confined within the precincts of Established Churches. I am not so blind to facts; nor would I, by any such insinuation, expose myself to the charge of aiding the delusion in other quarters. External profession without inward principle; the form of godliness without its power; the name to live in the midst of death ;—is a spiritual condition which, with greater or less frequency, is to be found in every sect, under every distinguishing designation :—and remember, my hearers,—in all of them it is alike worthless ;-worthless now,-emphatically worthless in the great day of final settlement. Let the words of Christ, then, sound in every ear, and tell as they ought on every conscience, and waken salutary self-searching in every heart:— “VERILY, VERILY, I SAY UNTO THEE, EXCEPT A MAN BE BORN AGAIN, HE CANNOT SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD !"

THE END.

FULLARTON & Co., PRINTERS, VILLAFIELD.