refused to the might and the glory of human wisdom-often refused to the most strenuous exertions of human might and human talent, and generally met with in richest abundance among the ministrations of the men of simplicity and prayer.

Some of you have heard of the individual, who, under an oppression of the severest melancholy, implored relief and counsel from his physician. The unhappy patient was advised to attend the performances of a comedian, who had put all the world into ecstacies. But it turned out, that the patient was the comedian himself-and that while his smile was the signal of merriment to all, his heart stood uncheered and motionless, amid the gratulations of an applauding theatre—and evening after evening, did he kindle around him a rapture in which he could not participate-a poor, helpless, dejected mourner, among the tumults of that high-sounding gaiety, which he himself had

created.

Let all this touch our breasts with the persuasion, of the nothingness of man. Let it lead us to withdraw our confidence from the mere instrument, and to carry it upwards to him who alone worketh all in all. Let it reconcile us to the arrangements of his providence, and assure our minds, that he can do with one arrangement, what we fondly anticipated from another. Let us cease to be violently affected by the mutabilities of a fleeting and a shifting world—and let nothing be suffered the power of dissolving for an instant, that connection of trust which should ever subsist between our minds and the will of the all-working Deity. Above all, let us carefully separate between our liking for certain accompaniments of

the word, and our liking for the word itself. Let us be jealous of those human preferences, which may bespeak some human and adventitious influence upon our hearts, and be altogether different from the influence of Christian truth upon Christianized and sanctified affections. Let us be tenacious only of one thing-not of holding by particular ministers-not of saying, that "I am of Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos"-not of idolizing the servant, while the Master is forgotten,-but let us hold by the Head, even Christ. He is the source of all spiritual influence-and while the agents whom he employs, can do no more than bring the kingdom of God to you in word-it lies with him either to exalt one agency, or to humble and depress another-and either with or without such an agency, by the demonstration of that Spirit, which is given unto faith, to make the kingdom of God come into your hearts with power.

SERMON IX.

ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH.

GALATIANS III. 23.

shut

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

"SHUT up unto the faith." This is the expression which we fix upon as the subject of our present discourse and to let you more effectually into the meaning of it, it may be right to state, that in the preceding clause "kept under the law," the term kept, is, in the original Greek, derived from a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception is altogether military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but 'one-and that one leads those who are compelled to take it to the faith of the Gospel. They are shut up to this faith as their only alternative-like an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general, to take up the only position in which they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only town in which they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to have been a favourite style of argument with Paul, and the way in which he often carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies of his Master's cause. It forms the basis of that mas

terly and decisive train of reasoning, which we have in his epistle to the Romans. By the operation of a skilful tactics, he, (if we may be allowed the expression) maneuvered them, and shut them up to the faith of the Gospel. It gave prodigious effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, as he often does, upon their own principles, and turned them into instruments of conviction against themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew. He made a full concession to them of the leading principles of Judaism-and this gave him possession of the vantage ground upon which these principles stood. He made use of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge laid before them in the Gospel. He led them to Christ by a schoolmaster which they could not refuse-and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was a very short "Cursed be he that continueth not in all the words of this law to do them." But, in point of fact, they had not done them. To them then belonged the curse of the violated law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. They found the faith and the free offer of the Gospel to be the only avenue open to receive them. They were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left them no other outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy laid before us in the New Testament.

one.

But this is not the only example of that peculiar way in which St. Paul has managed his discussions with the enemies of the faith. He carried the principle of being all things to all men into his very reasonings. He had Gentiles as well

as Jews to contend with-and he often made some sentiment or conviction of their own, the starting point of his argument. In this same epistle to the Romans, he pleaded with the Gentiles the acknowledged law of nature and of conscience. In his speech to the men of Athens, he dated his argument from a point in their own superstition. In this way he drew converts both from the ranks of Judaism, and the ranks of idolatry-and whether it was the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, or the school of poetry and philosophy in countries of refinement, that he had to contend with, his accomplished mind was never at a loss for principles by which he bore down the hostility of his adversaries, and shut them up unto the faith.

But there is a fashion in philosophy as well as in other things. In the course of centuries, new schools are formed, and the old, with all their doctrines, and all their plausibilities, sink into oblivion. The restless appetite of the human mind for speculation, must have novelties to feed upon -and after the countless fluctuations of two thousand years, the age in which we live has its own taste, and its own style of sentiment to characterize it. If Paul, vested with a new apostolical commission, were to make his appearance amongst us, we should like to know how he would shape his argument to the reigning taste and philosophy of the times. We should like to confront him with the literati of the day, and hear him lift his intrepid voice in our halls and colleges. In his speech to the men of Athens, he refers to certain of their own poets. We should like to hear his references to the poetry and the publications of