go back to the beginning; begin your life over again, begin as if you had not trodden one step, and begin with Christ. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." Young men, begin with Christ. Hear him saying to you in a voice sweeter than the music of the spheres, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Does the burden of sin lie heavy on your conscience for past transgressions; and do you thirst for pardon? Hear him speak to you: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." Are you afraid that any of your good works will constitute a righteousness fit to adorn you in the sight of God? Hear him speak: "Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted:" behold my everlasting righteousness, my glories, my sufficiency. O, come at once to Christ; begin your way through the appointed medium for your soul's sake.

O, young men, my mouth is open, my heart is enlarged towards you. Forgive me if I have trespassed too long on your patience this evening; forgive me if I have tired any one in this assembly this evening: but the matter is important; it is a matter of life, and it is a matter of death. When I descend these stairs I may never see my audience more from this pulpit: I may be called to the bar of God to give an account of the sermon I have preached, and you to give an account of the sermon you have heard. O, young men, what is to be your decision to-night? What is your mind made up to? What do you determine by the grace and strength of God to do? To persist in a course of sin and vanity; still to pursue the same paths which have bred so much distress in your minds, and sown so many thorns on your pillows? Is it so? Do you determine, and is this your solemn resolve-to neglect and to turn a deaf ear to the advice that is given you to-night? Then, without any argument of the preacher, you must meet the preacher another day, and you must meet the Master of the preacher and your Master too; and there at his bar, when the poor individual who 'now addresses you is asked, "Did you warn that young man in the Metropolis, did you tell him of his danger, did you point out me as the source of life and happiness, did you tell him that he must perish without he came to me and lived?" the preacher shall turn to you and say "Let him. speak for himself." And what will your conscience answer, beloved?

I have only another idea; and it is this which makes me anxious to recover you out of the snares of the devil. O, be persuaded to-night to stop one moment, and ask yourselves, What do I expect at the end of the journey I am going? What do I promise myself at the end? It would be a sad thing for a labouring man to work six days in the week, and at the end to have no wages. And what do you promise yourself, young man, at the end of a course of folly. will ask you to-night, and let your conscience be my witness, "What fruit tave ye had already in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death." Young men, you may now love your work, which is sin; and you may love your master, who is Satan: but, believe the preacher, believe the Word of Life, you will never love your wages; for "the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

THE FALLIBILITY OF HUMAN JUDGMENT.

REV. E. CRAIG, A.M.

ST. JAMES'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH, SEPTEMBER 14, 1834.

"But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."-1 SAMUEL, xvi. 7.

WHEN the Lord rejected Saul from reigning over Israel, he sent his prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse, in Bethlehem, to anoint one of his sons, whom he had chosen king. When Samuel arrived at Bethlehem, in obedience to the will of God, he sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice: and as the sons of Jesse came before him in succession, the prophet exercised his judgment upon them, with a view to determine, by his own natural means of knowledge, and the principles which experience had led him to establish in his own mind, on which of them it was probable the crown of Israel was to be bestowed. He fell, however, into error; he was misled, as many are, by outward appearance: for when he compared the stately external form of Eliab with his brethren, he said, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before him." But the Lord God, who dwelleth in the depths of man's heart, answered, and corrected the unuttered suggestion of Samuel's mind, and showed him the error into which he had fallen. "The Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart."

Now, here is a principle of the divine government which is well worthy your attention; for it is put before us in direct contrast with our own natural tendencies and habits; and put before us in a way powerfully calculated to show us the fallacy and the carnality of our own mode of judging of each other. "The Lord seeth not as man seeth." Now, it is not to be supposed that man is condemned because he has not the omniscience of the Deity: it is not man's sin that he does not look at the heart; he cannot look at the heart; it is abundantly proved that, in his attempts to judge the heart, he falls into greater error than when he judges by the countenance.

But the error into which Samuel fell, and into which the majority of men fall, is, a carnal readiness to form a conclusion, in a matter not delegated to them, upon inadequate grounds. It is wisdom in such a case to recognize our unfitness to form a judgment, owing to the scanty range of our knowledge: and yet we see how frequently the reverse is the case, and how, on inadequate grounds, men rush to an immediate conclusion. In the present instance, how

thoroughly inadequate were the grounds on which even the prophet of the Lord allowed himself to determine a point which the Lord had promised to do for him. The first individual whom the Lord had appointed king over Israel, appears to have been a man of a high commanding person, but of very defective moral character. When he stood among the people, he was higher, from his houlders and upward, than any of them. When, therefore, Samuel went to seek among the sons of Jesse a successor to the throne, and his eye rested upon he superior stature and countenance of Eliab, led by the form of Saul who had been first chosen, and deceived by the undue influence which personal appearance evidently has on the human mind, he concluded at once that Eliab must be king. He suffered all the testimony of his experience, founded on Saul's wilful and impenitent conduct, to be silenced by the outward personal attractions of Eliab and, though he had manifest proof of the unfitness of Saul for the throne, he did not allow himself to entertain the idea which his experience might have suggested to him, that, in this case also, a comely exterior might cover a weak understanding and a depraved heart.

This, then, is the difference between the judgment of man and the judgment of God. God looks through all the motives, and forms a just and impartial judgment from all the premises before him: man sees but little indeed; but he forms a hasty, and partial, and inferior judgment from all the evidence that is really before his eyes. Samuel was not warranted in coming to the conclusion he did come to: it was unfair, and was not the necessary result of his experience, but his own voluntary, unadvised, and hasty act; it was not his ignorance, but his error; it was not his misfortune, but his sin.

It is a sin, also, to which we are all sadly prone. There are certain external gifts, both of body and of mind, that obtain the applause of men; and these are too frequently allowed to carry away our approbation, when far higher and more excellent qualifications are suffered to sink into insignificance. The various scenes of life present unnumbered instances of the evil to which we refer. With a view, therefore, to correct this evil, allow me to illustrate it by a reference to several facts of Scripture; and then draw from the whole some inferences which may tend to our own profit.

In the first place, GOD SEETH NOT AS MAN SEETH: "for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." He looks through the outward covering, and his piercing eye cannot be deceived by the mystery and the gloss of human cunning or pretence. A pleasing exterior or manner cannot hide from him the sin of the heart; nor can he be turned aside by a defective form, or an uneducated mind or manner, from the brightness of moral excellence. The judgment of God can take no bias whatever from the weakness and ignorance of man; it takes no account of the admiration or of the scorn of the creature.

The Scripture supplies us with some very striking cases which exemplify this impartial judgment of the Lord. The judicial decision in the garden of Eden is a remarkable instance of it. Our fallen parent first attempted to set up a plea of innocence, and even endeavoured, for a while, to be ignorant of the crime which had been committed: and subsequently, when all the three transgressors are brought before God, an attempt is made, both by Adam and Eve,

o throw the blame from themselves. But how wisely and justly does the holy Lord God discriminate between them, and so fairly apportion to each their due measure of punishment, as to leave it beyond all question that "the Lord searcheth the heart."

There are some striking instances in which God marks and discerns the wickedness that is unseen by man. The instance of Enoch is one of these. The ungodly men of his days had spoken hard speeches against him, and derided him and his prophecies: but, in the mean time, “Enoch walked with God;" and the eye of God was upon him, and he saw not as men seeth, but, judging righteous judgment, laid up an indelible record of the ungodly speeches which ungodly men had spoken, and removed his servant by a triumphant translation to a happier world, where his walk should be nearer and unclouded.

The history of Moses presents to us a similar instance. In his early endeavours to reform and benefit his people, he was misunderstood; and, having interfered for their welfare at the risk of his life, he was driven by the unfair and treacherous conduct of those whom he laboured to serve, to leave the palace and to seek shelter in the wilderness. But there the Lord recognised him as a chosen and faithful servant; and from hence, at length he called him to be the leader and commander of his people, and the law-giver to the whole world.

There is a still more striking case in the mysterious dealing of God with Job. The misfortunes which burst simultaneously upon him, deceived his best friends, and judging from outward appearances, they pronounced him a wicked man, and called on him, as a matter of absolute duty, to justify God, and acknowledge his sin, and those remarkable visitations as his punishment. But, in the midst of all these trials, the Lord knew him to be "a just man, one who feared God and eschewed evil;" and, in the end, he brought forth his judgment as the light, and his righteousness as the noon-day.

We pass on to the instance of the Redeemer himself. Our blessed Lord was regarded by the priesthood and the people as a madman and a deceiver- as one who was possessed by an unclean spirit: and in the last crisis of his sufferings, while some regarded him as a wicked man brought justly to his end, justly smitten of God, and afflicted for his crimes, others reviled him with the manifest impotency of his pretentions, and, drowning the very cry of natural humanity in their own bosoms, even in the very hour of his agony they cried, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God." Yet, with all the meekness of a silent, unresisting submission to an ignominious death, as if he deserved the disgrace, the Almighty Father regarded him in the very crisis of his humiliation, as "the Elect in whom my soul delighteth; my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; the Man who is my fellow." Dying a felon's death, and estimated as a felon by the people, that death was regarded by Omniscience as the glory of the divine government, as the emphatic demonstration of the divine wisdom and power, as the bliss and the salvation of the world. Having "a countenance more marred than any man, and his form more than the sons of men," the Lord regarded him as the medium through which he would shine into men's hearts, and declare the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Men accounted him a blasphemer; but the Lord declared that " grace and truth were in his lips." Men regarded his death as

a satisfaction due to the broken law of his own nation; the Lord accounted him the spotless victim in the cause of redeeming mercy. There never has been a more striking exemplification of the difference between the judgment of God, and that of man Man saw nothing but the depth of the ignominious humiliation to which the Redeemer gratuitously devoted himself; the Lord looked to the fathomless depth of love and pity which prompted his propitiatory sacrifice. "Man looketh upon the outward appearance; but the Lord looketh on the heart."

A similar difference of estimation, also is found with reference to the Apostles, the first preachers of Christian truth. Men thought lightly of their character. "I think," says St. Paul, "that God hath set forth us, the Apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, to angels, and to nien. We are fools for Christ's sake: we are made as the filth of the earth, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day." And in another place, he speaks of their being regarded as "reprobates," But what in the midst of this contempt of men, is the judgment of God? "We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish." They were approved by the divine wisdom as the ministers of God, and in all their varied labours they had his testimony with then. So that, according as they were differently esteemed by God and by men, they exhibited in their own persons that extraordinary confidence which St. Paul has put on record: "As deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

These are some of the instances given in the infallible record of the favourable judgment of God, of those whom the world has despised. We may just glance at other instances, where those who obtain the favourable estimation of men, stood condemned before Him who searcheth the heart. This was the case with Saul, who was still honoured before the people, long after God had rejected him with Absalom, whose personal appearance stole away the hearts of the people, and seduced the subjects of David from their rightful sovereign: with Nebuchadnezzar, who, walking in his pride, commanded the adoration of his people to a golden image, which he blasphemously set up to represent himself: and the Lord doomed him seven years to a degraded condition in the wilderness. It was the case also with Herod, who, while the people cried, seduced by his oratory, "It is the voice of a god, and not the voice of a man,” was smitten by the angel of the Lord, and was eaten of worms, because he gave not the glory to God. We find also, in the prophecies of Ezekiel, a record of the different esteem which God forms from men of the worshippers in those days: "They come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness." In the same way we are told of those, who, in the days of our Lord, appeared to pray, but inwardly were full of hypocrisy; and of those, who in the last day shall say, "Have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name done many wonderful works?" "to whom he will say, "Depart, I never knew you."

The instances we have thus noticed will serve as a satisfactory illustration of the fact. We see from them how different is the judgment of God from the judgment of men; and how different are his means of judging from theirs.