has ever been fairly disproved. They have stood, each of them, for eighteen hundred years, open to the scrutiny of the world. The separate force of each has gone on augmenting, by the events of history and the progress of the human mind in sound reasoning. The combined force comprehends every species of probable argument, sustained by positive matters of fact, which can influence man; and is receiving fresh confirmations by the fulfilment of prophecies, the attestations of history, the discovery of manuscripts, coins and medals of ancient times, in every age.

This force is best estimated by contrasting it with the decreasing evidences of every other religion or pretended religion. The proofs, such as they were, of the Heathen mythologies have long waned and gone out. The proofs, of mahometanism have been for ages abandoned. The evidences of the different idolatrous religions of Africa or India, of America or the South Sea islands, cannot for an instant bear the light. The pretended sufficiency claimed by natural religion diminishes in force, every year, by the loud condemnation of facts and experience. But the evidences of Christianity remain in undecayed vigor, and augmented brightness.

In fact, the Christian religion is the only religion in the world which rested originally on decided and distinct and reasonable claims to the obedience of men, and which has sustained those claims through a series of ages, and exhibits now a bold and intelligible front to the observation of mankind. There never was a religion but the Christian (under which I include the preparatory Revelation) that laid any one just pretension to the faith of its followers.

And at this moment Christianity is the only religion in the world that advances any fair claim on our belief. The unsubstantial grounds of other religions sink and disappear before the least inquiry; those of the Christian increase and strengthen the more they are examined.

So that this question is between Christianity and no religion at all. If Christianity be not defensible, no one with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other.h

(h) Paley.

and pledges of the sacraments, in the voice and persuasion of ministers, in the promises and encouragements to prayer; and shall man sullenly refuse to use these helps, or to mount by them towards the road of heaven? Surely, surely you will not violate the obligations which spring from the immense discoveries of the love of God! Surely you will not turn into deeper condemnation all those means of life which are let down, as it were, from heaven to earth, in order to draw you up from earth to heaven!

2. And can you forget THE DEEP INTERESTS WHICH ARE AT STAKE IN CONSEQUENCE OF THESE DISCOVERIES?-the last dread day, heaven, hell, eternity!

Can you forget that LAST DREAD DAY, when you must stand and be judged for the deeds done in the body? Can you forget that solemn assize, that tribunal where omniscience will detail the facts; where infinite truth will pronounce the sentence, where Omnipotence itself will carry it into execution. That day which even natural religion acknowledges, which the conscience of man involuntarily anticipates, and on the transactions of which the gospel has shed a blaze of light. The assembled world will then be arraigned; the secrets of every heart will be made manifest; the moral accountableness of man will be displayed; the force of the evidences of revelation will be recognized; the hidden motives which rendered these evidences unproductive of practical persuasion will be brought forth; the actual vice, and perverseness, and resistance to conscience, and wilful obstinacy, and rebellion of heart, and neglect of warnings, and quenching of the motions of the Spirit, and callousness of heart and perception, will then be made fully manifest; contrary arguments and reasonings of the corrupt intellect of man will be overborne by the instant irradiations of truth; and out of his own mouth, and by his own confession, will each sinner be judged. Avert then this awful condemnation! Oh, be wise to-day! Awaken now to those obligations which will be re-called and re-inforced on your distracted conscience at the last great tribunal.

And is THE HEAVENLY PRIZE WHICH CHRISTIANITY PRESENTS TO YOUR VIEW UNWORTHY OF YOUR PURSUIT? A prize

so inestimable, that it is difficult even to raise our minds to any conception of it. We contrast it with our present circumstances of darkness, folly, guilt, self-condemnation, dread of the Almighty Avenger, enmity, alienation of mind, misery; and we endeavor to think of what that happiness must be, where the NEGATIVES of these actual sorrows will lead on to all the POSITIVE blessings of which our finite nature is susceptible. Not only shall there be no pain, no night, no defect, no tears, no apprehensions, no curse there; but there shall be the fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore. These pleasures shall be spiritual and exalted. The happiness of mind is infinitely superior to any bodily satisfaction, however pure or permanent. The prize which Christianity proposes is the highest measure of the purest joys of which man is susceptible-the joy of intellect when fully illuminated with truth; the joy of conscience when thoroughly penetrated with light and peace; the joy of the heart and affections when completely satiated with their appropriate objects; the joy of the whole nature of man when placed in entire repose and satisfaction, after a wearied life of conflict and temptation.

And not only so: it is a happiness springing from the immediate presence and approbation of the great God, the fountain of all felicity, the source of peace, the spring of blessedness to all intelligent creation; whose frown constitutes the essence of misery, whose favor is essential life and joy. Nor this only: but it is the seeking of Christ, the presence of Jesus our Redeemer, the being with him where he is, to behold the glory which he had with the Father before the world was, the contemplating Deity in the person of the only begotten Son, the casting our crowns of brightness at his feet, and praising his love as the Lamb that was slain and hath redeemed us to God by his blood.1·

The communion of the blessed orders of angels will also be a part of that heavenly state. Yes, we shall join the innumerable company of angels; we shall see Gabriel and all his compeers in the angelic host, from the, loftiest seraph

m

(k) John xvii. 24.

(1) Rev. v. 9, 12

(m) Heb. xii. 22.

discharge if not one of them existed? Remember, if you forget them, your Maker does not; if you fail to regard them, there is a book in which every one is noted; if you retrace not the series of particular advantages, God will republish them before an assembled world. Yes, moral obligations cannot be burst asunder with impunity. The Almighty has a book of reckoning, to which the volume of your past history will respond, and which the records of conscience will confirm.

It is not yet too late. All your advantages may yet be turned to the end for which they were granted. Salvation is yet proposed. The gospel calls you to obedience. Believe the divine Revelation. Hesitate no longer. Renounce your unbelief and disobedience of heart, and submit to the yoke of faith.

But, weighty as these considerations are which spring from your original obligations to God, the nature of Christianity, the force of its evidences, and the advantages you have especially enjoyed, they may and will fail of their ef fect, unless we take into account, what I proposed to notice in the last place.

V. THE MOMENTOUS DISCOVERIES WHICH CHRISTIANITY MAKES, AND THE DEEP INTERESTS WHICH ARE CONSEQUENTLY DEPENDENT ON THE RECEPTION OF IT.

This carries the obligations to a height which no words can express nor imagination conceive aright. Dependent on the determination of this question, is every other that deserves the name. On the one point, whether we obey or reject Christianity, our happiness here and hereafter, our immortal destiny, heaven and hell; death, judgment, and eternity; an interminable state of the most exalted bliss, or the most unutterable woe; the accomplishment of all the promised blessings, or the infliction of all the threatened penalties of Christianity depend.

1. Recollect, I entreat you, THE MOMENTOUS DISCOVERIES WHICH CHRISTIANITY MAKES, the new position in which it places you, the new doctrines it reveals, the new duties it. enjoins, the new relations it creates, the new and unutterable truths it proclaims. It opens eternity. It reveals the

It

character and government of the invisible Creator. brings life and immortality to light. It discloses all the sources of your misery. It displays the corruption and guilt of your nature. It reveals that standard of sin and holiness by which God judges you now, and will judge you at the last day. It calls you to repentance and confession, to faith and humility, to love to God and man, to a spiritual. and obedient life. It reveals the divine Agent by which all the claims of the gospel may be complied with, and all its duties fulfilled the Holy Spirit of grace. What scenes are thus thrown open in the endless vista before you! What duties arise; what dangers impend! Will you not, then, awake at the call and invitation of mercy? Will you remain indifferent and stupid and perverse, when God has condescended to make known to you your fall, your ruin, your remedy, your way, your end?

1

Call to mind, particularly, THE IMMENSE LOVE of God in THE REDEMPTION OF JESUS CHRIST, which is the peculiar discovery of Revelation. This increases the obligation of obedience to the gospel. What! shall God have expended all his love, displayed all his wisdom, illustrated all his most glorious attributes, in the salvation of man; and shall man, in pride and self-conceit, turn away his attention? Shall he drivel about trifles, and hide and blunt his sense of accountableness amidst speculations and vain reasonings? Shall the eternal Judge have put off all his terrors, and clothed himself in mercy; shall he have sent his only-begotten Son into this miserable world as a sacrifice for sin; shall he have manifested himself as ESSENTIAL LOVE, as delighting in the happiness of his creatures, as diffusing and communicating blessings to all the beings he has formed, in every way consistent with his infinite purity and holiness as a moral Governor; and shall man wrap himself up in his passions and his self-will, and spurn all this exuberant loving-kindness, and shelter his enmity under the guise of metaphysical difficulties? What! shall all possible HELPs to ruined man have been devised, not merely in the mighty salvation of Christ, but in the freeness of the gospel promises, in the institution of means of grace, in the seals