that there is they must try to make as great and momentous as they can. I believe that Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Wesleyans agree in essential, vital, lasting truths. Look at the points upon which they differ from each other, and make your election; but remember, it is an election in circumstantials, not in vital and essential truths. Indifference to vital truth or to deadly error is a very different thing. The world may call this liberality and enlightenment; but Christ will look upon it as latitudinarianism and lukewarmness. Essential truth is essential to salvation; circumstantial truth, to completeness or comfort. We may err in the latter, and yet be saved; if we err in the former, we cannot be saved. Socinians and Roman Catholics, as such, cannot be saved. I do not say of those who are Socinians or Roman Catholics, that they cannot and never will be saved; but this I do say of each, that it must be, if there be truth in the Bible, in spite of their creed, and not in consequence of it; and salvation will be more or less probable to them, just in the same ratio in which they abjure their peculiarities of doctrine, and learn that the arm of salvation is not an arm of flesh, but the arm of God manifest in the flesh.

Another evidence of departure from God, or unbelief, is not making progress. If there be no increase, the presumption is that there is decrease; if there be no progression, the presumption is that there is retrogression. I cannot find in the Bible the least evidence that I may stand still. But, of course, there are two or three ways of growing: you may grow downward in humility, as well as upward in holiness and conformity to God; and it is quite possible that we may be growing downward in humility simultaneously with our growing upward in holiness and likeness to God. If we are growing in our acquaintance with our own weakness, our own sinfulness, our own nntrustworthiness in ourselves and of ourselves, we are growing in the right direction; or if we are growing in greater victory over sin, greater conformity to the image of Christ, greater superiority to the attractions and allurements of the world, having our hearts more in heaven, then we are growing in another and no less heavenly direction. But the Christian must either grow

and approach to, or retrograde and depart from, the living God; he is never stationary.

A great sign of unbelief is the love of this world. This is the great source of apostasy to many. As long as you were without the riches of this world-when you were making your way, and just gaining enough to live by, and had nothing to spare-you were Christians, spiritually-minded men, devoted men; but at length the world begins to smile upon you, wealth begins to flow in, and in proportion as you become rich and prosperous, how true is it, in many cases, that you depart from the living God! We all long for more than we have; but we have to bless God through the endless ages of eternity, that God never made us what we wished, but what he, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to make us. The smiles and blandishments of the world are often the stings and poison of the Christian life and character: you cease to place your affections on God, and place them on the world; and you begin to love, and serve, and worship, and finally die in and with the world. By the world I do not mean mere external nature. The Christian is not called upon to have a distasteful eye or a tuneless ear, to wear a gloomy visage or exhibit an austere and sombre air; nor is he called on always to speak theology or teach its doctrines, or dispense his prescriptions (if he be a physician) amid a cluster of texts, or to sell doctrine (if he be a trader) along with his commodities. But when the world says, "Do this," and Christ says, "Do that," he then shows his Christianity by proving he has no choice. If Christ be his Master, he will follow him; if the world, he will follow it. It is more in the quiet decision of the Christian heart that true Christianity exists, than in all the noise and confusion you often hear in the world. I do not think the loudest professor the greatest believer. The very reverse of this is often the case. The great deep stream, as it rolls on its course, till it disembogues itself in the main, does so silently and softly. The brawling little mountain-brook, fed by a thunder-shower, makes a noise as its waters rush along its stony shallow bed, soon to leave it dry. It is often the soil which is scarcely fertile enough to bear grass upon its surface, that conceals rich veins of gold in undug mines below. So, often, under the most rugged and uncouth, or the

most quiet and apparently taciturn aspect, there lives the sustaining principle of true religion. Be slow to conclude that the loudest professor is the greatest Christian; be slow to conclude, that when you see nothing without, there is nothin within.

This departure from God, the great accompaniment of unbelief, is the commencement, unless arrested, of endless ruin: just as the approach to God is the commencement, unless stopped, of endless happiness. Remember the last words, addressed by our Lord to the two great classes of mankind: he says, "Come, ye blessed of my Father," to the one class; and to the other class, "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." The word "Come," addressed to the weary and heavy laden on earth, will also be repeated from the judgment-throne; the word "Depart," that strong characteristic of the unbelieving here, will also be repeated from the judgment-throne. And thus heaven is, as I have often told you, but a ceaseless approximation to God the centre; each being there is touched with a centripetal impulse, and brought nearer to God in light, happiness, holiness, knowledge, and joy. And hell, again, is just an eternal departure from God, each step in that departure deepening the agony felt, and darkening the dread and terrible eclipse.

Departure from God is the twilight of darkness and everlasting wo; approaching to God is the morning twilight that ushers in a day of everlasting glory and felicity. It rests with you, my dear hearers, under God, to take your choice-departure from God, or approach to God-hell with its misery, or heaven with happiness. It rests with you, under God, to choose this day which shall be your portion for ever and ever. I call on you to cleave to the word of God. Do not admit any thing supplemental to it, nor subtract any thing that is necessary to it. God's word, as I have already told you, is the very autograph of Deity; it is the only vicar and vicegerent of God that we have. upon earth; it is God's voice perpetuated in music and multiplied echoes. He still speaks in it, as he spoke in paradise to Adam and Eve. Cleave to this book, then; hold it fast as the voice of God. What it condemns, shrink from; what it applauds, cleave to. Take it as your chart sent from heaven, to guide you

through your journey on earth; take it as your lamp in life, as your hope in death, as your pathway to Jesus, to immortality, and the skies.

Maintain communion and fellowship with God; walk with and live near God. Miss not the house of prayer; forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. Do not let it be said that while a bright day fills the church, a wet day empties it; that a little headache, which would not detain you from the exchange, keeps you from the sanctuary. Do not make the Sabbath a day for recruiting your body: rather take a day from Cæsar for that end. Make the Sabbath a day of communion and fellowship with God. Do not show that you are punctual in the things of Cæsar, but careless in the things of God. Be thankful for your Sabbaths, for you know not how long they will last. Be thankful for the Bible, for you know not how long it will be open before you. Be thankful for your privileges, for you know not how long they will be continued to you. Work ye while it is yet day, for the night cometh in which no man can work. And, further, look upon all that surrounds you in this perishing world as transient, ephemeral, evanescent; all its glory is approaching to an eclipse; all its grandeur is soon to pass away, like as a fleet ship glides swiftly past us at sea. All that men call high, will soon be of low estate; all that men pronounce to be little, will be seen to be great and glorious. Look around you, and you see the long-established institutions of the nations tottering, and crashing, and falling to pieces. Even in our own country, men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. We are now quiet, at peace— comparative peace; like a beautiful gem, placed in the bosom of the mighty waters, our throne, and our country, and our people are secure; but it is, I solemnly believe, because upon that gem the name of Jesus is legibly inscribed, and that here among us his truth is more or less reverenced and prized. But, however long these privileges of ours may last, we know that our country must be moved; the shocks which shake the world cannot leave Great Britain unmoved. The day is fast hastening, I am persuaded, when all human institutions will be more or less

loosened; let us, therefore, look up, and learn to place our hearts upon that throne which cannot be shaken; and we shall hereafter have to bless God for dethroning kings, scattering dynasties, shattering thrones, and convulsing the world; for the shaking of things here will thus have led us to look to the things which never can be shaken or removed.

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And, dear friends, let us walk with God. last prescription, "Love to walk with God." more to see God. We always carry so much atheism with us when we travel into different countries, or go forth into the fields, or stroll by the seaside. Try not only to see nature, but to "rise from nature up to nature's God." Try to realize God in the less perspicuous book of nature, as well as in the more perfect page of revelation. Let the stars that shine in the firmament be to you as the eyes of the omniscient, omnipresent Deity. Let the tints of flowers, and their fragrance too, be to you but as visible creations of the smiles and breath of God. Let all nature's sounds proclaim to you his love; all scenes reflect to you his glory and greatness. And, whether the thunder-cloud overshadow you with its lowering darkness, or heaven's golden sunshine beam upon you in all its effulgence, you will have no awful forebodings of the future, no paralyzing reminiscences of the past. Every hill shall be to you a Tabor, every day a Sabbath, every house a sanctuary, every table a Lord's table; the bright orbs and worlds above and around you, as God's shining footprints in the immensity of space. You will taste of the grapes of Eschol in the wilderness, and see a door of hope in the valley of Achor. You shall hear the voice of God in all sounds, and realize the presence of a heavenly sunshine in the tents of Mesech, and the tabernacles of Kedar.

And, above all, pray for that Holy Spirit who is needed to create that confidence, arrest this departure, and give us a new impulse to carry us to God. And may that Spirit descend on us all, and make us earnest, loving, consistent, devoted Christians!

I have thus tried to analyze the mother sin, of which the sins enumerated in verse eighth are but the progeny. It may