Lecture upon its internal character, opens new fields of contemplation, and lays new grounds of confidence, as the constitution and framework of the religion is more and more developed.

But I pause. I leave the general subject. I entreat each one before me to apply it individually to his own heart. I appeal to every candid and serious mind. What is the tendency of the Christian religion? What is the incontrovertible force of the argument derived from it? What would it make you, your children, your family, if allowed its full power?

1. Let each one, then, ask himself, WHAT IS THE TENDENCY OF MY CHRISTIANITY? What is the influence and virtue which in my case it exerts? What force does my faith, my love, my obedience, put forth, to promote in the highest degree the temporal and spiritual welfare of those around me?

Let each one remember that the grand practical objection to Christianity is derived from THE UNHOLY LIVES OF PROFESSED CHRISTIANS. Men will not distinguish, as they ought, the bearings of a religion in itself and when duly received, from the lives and spirit of those who ever so slightly and imperfectly hold by it. The world looks to names rather than things; and seeing too many nominal believers as vain and treacherous, as cruel and proud, as dishonest and covetous, as profane and wicked, as others; they rashly conclude that all opinions are of secondary importance, that a man may believe what he likes, and that a moral life is all that the great Creator demands of him. Base and fatal inference! Let your lives, brethren, go to undeceive a misguided world. Show them the genuine tendencies of Christianity. Let them see in your spirit and temper the true effects of reliance upon Christ, of humility and self-denial, of subjection to the influences of the Holy Spirit, of separation from the love and the vain pursuits of the world, of good-will and forgiveness of injuries, of a

hope and expectation of heaven, of a zeal for the glory of Christ and the propagation of his gospel, of an habitual regard and preparation for eternity. Let them see Christianity embodied in its true virtue in your persons, in order that they may be led to a consideration of its nature and authority.

Let each one roll away the reproach falsely cast upon the Christian religion, so far as he is concerned. Let every one consider the honour of God as committed to his custody.

Open, then, your hearts, my friends, and especially my young friends, to receive the heavenly doctrine! Welcome the gospel! Let it have free course in you. Oppose not its mighty and sacred tendencies. Whatever obstacles to it exist in your principles, your habits, your pursuits, remove them out of the way. Take up the Holy Bible: let it work its work upon you. Remove the interposing hindrances; God will effectually help those that call upon him.

2. And when Christianity has had its due operation upon your own hearts, one of the first effects will be, that YOU WILL BE ANXIOUS TO SHOW ITS HOLY TENDENCY in your family, in your neighbourhood. Strive to take away and lessen stumbling-blocks. Unite in those great religious institutions which cast a brilliant light over a nation, and shed their glory through the Heathen and Mahomedan countries. Never does the genuine bearing of Christianity appear more attractive, than in self-denying schemes of benevolent activity, which have no other object than the glory of God and the honour of religion and the good of souls. The working of such institutions upon the public opinion of a nation, the tendency they have to unite a people in the more ardent pursuit of personal piety, the sway they exercise over thousands who might never otherwise have attended to the gospel, the hope they furnish of a further revival of religion and of the divine blessing and favour upon govern

ments, churches, nations,-render them amongst the most important and promising signs of the present times..

3. Finally, PRAY FOR THE COPIOUS INFLUENCES OF GRACE, and the co-operating aids of an almighty providence to hasten on the blessed period, foretold in the prophetic page, when THE TENDENCIES OF CHRISTIANITY SHALL BECOME EFFECTS; when the highest welfare and happiness of individuals and nations shall be actually accomplished. The ordinary assistances of the Holy Spirit are never wanting to the church. The innate power and virtue of Christianity depends on these assistances. All the bearing and struggling of doctrine and precepts and ministerial exhortation and example, and the labours of the spiritual church, would be in vain, without that animating power of the Spirit, which, like the principle of life in the works of nature, gives virtue and fruitfulness to the means employed. Christianity is never to be separated from the constant operation of its divine Author. But, besides these usual measures of grace, there have been, in various ages of the church, peculiar effusions of the influences of the Spirit; a general rekindling of the holy fire has taken place; ministers and people have been raised up to call a sleeping world to its true interests; Christianity has been vindicated from its false friends and its torpid and selfish adherents; its native doctrines have been asserted; the power of God has been humbly implored; the offices of parochial ministration have received a new impulse; the sacraments, the public prayers, the reading and preaching of God's word have been revived in their first freshness; souls have been converted in large numbers; bodies of spiritual and faithful believers have been raised up; the holy lives and active exertions of Christians have discovered fresh means for propagating the gospel; all has assumed a new appearance.

Such was the revival vouchsafed at the time of the blessed Reformation; fresh showers of grace were granted in a copious measure, and half Europe awoke at the call of truth.

We need a similar gift of the divine mercy now to bring on the future glories of the church; to give the operations of Christianity their full play; to remove interposing obstacles; to bind Satan, the great spiritual adversary, and turn the tendencies of our religion into ONE GRAND RESULT. All is moving towards this blessed end. Christianity has in itself all the innate causes of the salvation of the world; the prophetic word encourages our hopes; the close of the mystic period of the apostacies of the east and west approaches. "Lift up your heads," then, my Christian brethren, " for your redemption draweth nigh." All events in the world and in the church seem to conspire to this consummation. And, as the great principle of gravitation in the works of creation is drawing all matter towards the sun, the centre-object of the system, around which, so far as intervening obstacles allow, every thing is revolving; whilst no part is unaffected with the secret bias impressed on universal nature by the hand of the Creator; so is every thing gravitating, in the events of providence and the dealings of grace, towards the Sun of Righteousness, the great centre-object, around which all is moving, so far as interposing hindrances permit ; whilst nothing is exempt from the secret tendency impressed on things by the merciful will of our gracious God: nor will the operation cease till all revolve around the glorious source of light and salvation; and, drawing warmth and life from his immediate beams, display, through eternity, his glory, as the only source of all their irradiation and all their joy.

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LECTURE XIX.

THE TEST TO WHICH EVERY ONE MAY BRING THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, BY HUMBLY SUBMITTING TO ITS DIRECTIONS, AND MAKING A TRIAL FOR HIMSELF OF ITS PROMISED BLESSINGS.

1 JOHN V. 10.

He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself.

Ir may naturally be asked, after all we have said in our former Lectures on the divine excellency and holy effects of the Christian doctrine, whether there is any way in which a sincere inquirer may bring to the test of his own observation the truth of some of these statements-whether he cannot rise above a mere conviction of truth, to an experience and perception of the blessings proffered by Christianity.

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To this question we answer, that he may, and that the design of these Lectures is in a great measure lost, unless he actually receive for himself the heavenly benefit, and possess in his own breast the most forcible of all evidences, that arising from the inward power and truth of religion in fulfilling its promises.