impurity be done away from them. Heaven is the place into which nothing that is unclean or unholy can enter; and we are not preparing for our inheritance there, unless there be gathering upon us here, the lineaments of a celestial character. Now, a man may be accomplished in the moralities of civil and of social life, without so much as the semblance of such a character resting upon him. He may have no share whatsoever in the tastes, or in the enjoyments, or in the affections of paradise. There might not be a single trace of the mark of the Lamb of God upon his forehead. He who ponders so intelligently the secrets of the heart, may be able to discover there no vestige of any love for himself,-no sensibility at all to what is amiable or to what is great in the character of the Godhead, no desire whatever after his glory, no such feeling towards him who is to tabernacle with men, as will qualify him to bear a joyful part in the songs, and the praises of that city which has foundations. Surrounded as he is by the perishable admiration of his fellows, he is altogether out of affection, and out of acquaintance, with that Being with whom he has to do; and it will be found, on the great day of the doings, and the deliberations of the judgment-seat, that as he had no relish for God in time, so is he utterly unfit for his presence, or for his friendship in eternity.

It is said of God, that he created man after his own image, and it was upon losing this image that he was cast out of paradise: and ere he can be again admitted, the image that has been lost must again be formed on him. The

grand qualification for the society of heaven is, that each of its members be like unto God. In the selfish and sensual society of earth, there is many a feature of resemblance to the Godhead that is most readily dispensed with; and many an individual here obtains applause and toleration among his fellows, though there is not one attribute of the saintly character belonging to him. Let him only fulfil the stipulations of integrity, and smile benignity upon his friends, and render the alacrity of willing and valuable services to those who have never offended him, and on the strength of such performances as these, may he rise to a conspicuous place in the scale of this world's reputation. But what would have been the sad event to us, had these been the only performances which. went to illustrate the character ofthe Godhead, had he been a God of whom we could say no more, than that he possessed the one attribute of an unrelenting justice, or even that he went beyond this attribute, in the exercise of kindness to those who loved him, and in acts of beneficence to those who had never offended him? Do we not owe our place and our prospect to the love of God for his enemies? Is it not from the riches of his forbearance and longsuffering, that we draw all our enjoyments in time, and all our hopes for eternity? Is it not because, though grieved with sinners every day, he still waits to be gracious; that he holds out to us, his heedless and wayward children, the beseeching voice of reconciliation; and puts on such an aspect of tenderness to those who have not ceased from their birth to vex his

Holy Spirit, and to thwart him every hour by the perverseness of their disobedience? This is the godlike attribute on which all the privileges of our fallen race are suspended; and yet against the imitation of which, nature, when urged by the provocations of injustice, rises in such a tumult of strong and impetuous resistance. It is through the putting forth of this attribute, that any redeemed sinners are to be found among the other society of heaven; but into which no member shall be admitted out of this corrupt world, till there be stamped and realized on his own person, that feature of the divinity to which he owes a distinction so exalted. And tell us, ye men who are so jealous of right and of honour, who take sudden fire at every insult, and suffer the slightest imagination of another's contempt, or another's unfairness, to chase from your bosom every feeling of complacency;-ye men whom every fancied affront puts into such a turbulence of emotion, and in whom every fancied infringement stirs up the quick and the resentful petite for justice-how will you stand the rigorous application of that test by which the forgiven of God are ascertained, even that the spirit of forgiveness is in them, and by which it will be pronounced whether you are indeed the children of the highest, and perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect?

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But we must hasten to a close, and will therefore, barely suggest some other matters of selfexamination. We ask you, to think of the facility with which you might obtain the approbation of men, without being at all like unto

God in the holiness of his character. We ask you to think of the delight which he takes in the contemplation of what is pure, and moral, and righteous. We ask you to think how one great object of his creation, was to diffuse over the face of it a multiplied resemblance of himself, and that, therefore, however fit you may be for sustaining your part in the alienated community of this world, you are most assuredly unfit for the great and the general assembly of the spirits of just men made perfect, if unlike unto God who is in the midst of them, you have no congenial delight with the Father of all, in the contemplation of spiritual excellence. Now, are you not blind to the glories and the perfections of that Being who realises this excellence to a degree that is infinite? Does not the creature fill up all your avenues of enjoyment, while the Creator is forgotten? In reference to God, is there not an utter dullness and insensibility of all your regards to him? If thus blind to the perception of that supreme virtue and lovliness which reside in the Godhead, are you not, in fact, and by nature an outcast from the Godhead? And an outcast will you ever remain, until your character be brought under some mighty, revolutionizing influence, which is able to shift the currency of your desires, and to over-rule nature with all her obstinate habits, and all her fond and favourite predilections.

These are topics of great weight and great pregnancy; but we leave them to your own thoughts, and only ask you at present to look at the vivid illustration of them that may be

gathered out of the history of Job. In reference to his fellows, he could make a triumphant appeal to the honour and the humanity which adorned him, he could speak of the splendid career of beneficence that he had run, and, in the recollection of the plaudits that had surrounded him, he could boldly challenge the inspection of all his neighbours, and of all his enemies, on the whole tract of his visible history in the world. He protested his innocence before them, and even so long as he had only heard of God by the hearing of the ear, did he address him in the language of justification. But when God at length revealed himself,-when the worth and the majesty of the Eternal stood before him in visible array,-when the actual presence of his Maker brought the claims of his Maker to bear impressively upon his conscience, it was not merely the presence of the power of God which overawed him; it was the presence of the righteousness of God which convinced him, and when, from the bright assemblage of all that was pure, and holy, and graceful in the aspect of the Divinity, he turned the eye of contemplation downward upon himself,-O it is instructive to be told, how the vaunting patriarch shrunk into all the depths of selfabasement at so striking a manifestation; and how he said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and in ashes."

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It is indeed a small matter to be judged of man's judgment. He who judges us is God. From this judgment there is no escape, and no