MORAL ABLUTION.

"Wash you, make you clean." -Isa. i. 16.

MATERIAL baptisms, whether sprinklings or immersions, are mere shadows and symbols. Their only use is to adumbrate the necessity of a moral cleansing of the soul. The baptism of water if you like for a ceremonial age, but the baptism of fire, and of the Holy Ghost, is the baptism that Christ has commissioned us to preach. Christ sent us "not to baptize but to preach the Gospel." In connexion with this subject the words teach :

I. That sin CAN be separated from man's nature. The language of the text implies this. Sin is no more a part of human nature than a stain is of a garment. First: Human nature has existed without ever having been touched by sin. Adam and

Eve in innocence. Christ through all His life could say, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." He was the "holy, harmless, undefiled." Secondly: Human nature does exist after having been cleansed from sin. It does so in heaven. There it is "without spot or wrinkle," &c. Talk not of sin, therefore as something ingrained,

inwrought, essential to humanity. It is no part of humanity. It is but a filthy stain that can be cleansed, a disease that can be eradicated. Indeed a man is only a man in proportion to his sinlessness. The words teach :

II. That sin SHOULD be separated from man's nature. There are three obvious reasons for this command. First: Because your pollution conceals the moral image of Himself, which your Maker has impressed upon your nature. Man by sin so tattoos his moral being, that scarcely an element of the Divine can be recognised. Sin is such a besmearment of the moral mirror of man's being that scarcely a Divine ray is seen reflected. Man, wash it off, and shew forth the glory of thy Maker. Secondly: Because your pollution enfeebles your moral health. Physical pollution is inimical to physical health. Half, perhaps, of the physical diseases spring from want of bodily cleanliness. Anyhow the defilement of sin impairs our moral constitution! Sin renders a man powerless for good. Thirdly: Because your pollution injures society. The leper of old was considered unclean, and was prohibited on account of the injurious influence of his

disease, from mingling with society. Sin is a moral leprosy;-it poisons the social air. The words teach :

III. That sin MUST be separated from man's nature by man himself. "Wash you." Another may dip your body and cleanse your person, but no one can cleanse your spirit but yourself. First: A cleansing element, all efficacious and free, has been provided for you in the gospel. "There is a fountain opened for sin," &c. In the gospel, the moral Jordan, clear, deep, and wide, rolls at the feet of the leper. Sinner, go and "wash in this Jordan." Secondly Though this cleansing element is thus provided, its personal efficacy depends upon personal application. "Wash you, make you clean." Go to it; there it is, replicating on your ear, and meandering at your feet. You have no distance to travel. Go to it, it has cleansed millions as defiled as you, and rolls its purifying volume as freely and fully now as ever-"Wash you." Religion is a personal thing.

vation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light."--Rom. xiii. 11, 12.

THESE words teach three things concerning the earthly and the heavenly state of the good.

I. That there is a vast contrast between the earthly and the heavenly state of the good. First Here their salvation is in process, there it is in perfection. "Now is salvation nearer." Secondly: Here their existence is night, there it is day. Their life before death is night, suggestive of imperceptibility. Night hides the landscapes and the sea in her sable mantle, and even the brightest light of the lamps she then holds over us, serves but to impress us with the mighty wonders she has concealed. The Christian sees "through a glass darkly" now. His life after death is "day." Death opens the eyes on a bright universe.

II. That the earthly state of the good is rapidly expiring, the heavenly is about to dawn. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Whilst this is true, even of the youngest Christian, it is pre-eminently true of those who are far advanced in life.

The night of our earthly life is far spent, the day of eternity is about to break. The clouds are about parting their awful folds.

III. That the expiring of the earthly, and the approach of the heavenly, are a powerful argument for spiritual earnestness." Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep." First: The work we have to do is most urgent. What is it? (1) The renunciation of all evil. "Cast off the works

of darkness." Ignorance, crime, &c. (2) The adoption of all good. "Put on the armour of light," Eph. vi. 217. Secondly: The time for accomplishing it is rapidly Let us awake therefore. The lost years of contracting. your existence call on you to awake, the interests of truth call on you to awake, the value of souls calls on you to awake. Sleep not on the shore while the mighty billows of eternity are approaching.

CONSCIENCE, THE LOSS OF ITS

CONTROL, NOT ITS POWER.

The

It is quite true that the conscience has lost its proper control, but it has not lost all power. On the contrary, it is in some respects as active and energetic as ever. It works not the less potently because it works destructively. A court of justice perverted into a court of injustice may be as active in its latter as in its former capacity. Court of Inquisition in Spain, the Star Chamber, and the Court of High Commission in the reign of the Stuarts in our own country, and the Tribunals in Paris in the Reign of Terror, were as busily employed, and as powerful, as the most righteous courts of justice that ever sate in the same kingdoms. It is not conceivable that the conscience should ever cease

to exist in the breast of any responsible agent; certain it is, that in man's present nature it often wields a tremendous energy. Misery never reaches its utmost intensity except when inflicted by the scourges of an accusing conscience. Wickedness never becomes so unrelenting as when it seems to have received the sanction of the moral law. What might otherwise have been a mere impulse of blind passion becomes now persevering and systematic villany or cruelty. Not unfrequently it assumes the shape of cold-blooded persecution, committed without reluctance and without remorse. The conscience now shows what had been its power for good if properly exercised, and how it can bear down and subordinate all the other and mere sympathetic feelings of the mind. We

have heard of the bitterness of legalized tyranny, that is of tyranny legalized by civil law; but this is nothing to the severity which regards itself as consecrated by moral law. The persecution becomes tenfold more bitter and unrelenting, when instead of the name of justice, it can take to itself the still more sacred name of religion; and the actors imagine that they are promoting higher interests than those of man, and doing service to God. "The apotheosis of error," says Bacon, "is the greatest evil of all." Take the following illustration of the two species of cruelty. In one of the instructive incidents of the French Revolution, we have the record of a lady of rank (mother of the Marquis de Custine) assaulted by an infernal mob, as she was descending the stairs of the building in which her father-in-law was being tried. "It is the daughter of the traitor," (observe how men must first defame those whom they injure,) was the language which, mingled with horrid imprecations, reached her ears. Already some with naked swords had placed themselves before her; others, half-clothed, had caused their women to draw back, a certain sign that murder was about to be enacted; and she felt that the first symptom of weakness betrayed by her would be the symptom of her death. At this crisis, she observed a fisherwoman among the foremost of the crowd. The woman, revolting in her appearance, held an infant in her

arms. The lady approached her, and said, "what a sweet babe you have." Take it, replied the parent, who understood her by one word and glance, you can return it to me at the foot of the steps. With the child in her arms, the lady descended into the court, unsaluted by even an abusive word. It is a picture of the scenes of a political convulsion; and we discover in it the working of an unenlightened conscience, and a perverted sense of wrong, making the actors to clothe their victims in imaginary guilt, before treating them as guilty. REV. J. M'Cosн, A.M.

CONSCIENCE PERVERTED.

"It

were probably," says John Foster, "absurd to expect that any mind should itself be able to detect all its own obliquities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right, as they could have no doubt, till they arrived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and made slaves. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle." The illustration is most apposite of the constant power of a sinful will, like this concealed loadstone, to draw aside the conscience from its proper bearing and direction, and lead the possessor astray while he thinks he is holding on in the proper path.-IBID.