from a voluntary agent, and be, in fact, the laborious result of a most difficult, and persevering, and pains-taking habit of obedience.

And if this be true of the mere sense of gratitude, it is still more obviously true of the services of gratitude. "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?" is the genuine language of this affection. It seeks to make a gratifying return of service, and that, under the feeling that it ought to do so. Or, in other words, do we behold that it is the will of man, prompted by a sense of duty, which leads him on to the obedience of gratitude, and that the whole of this obedience is pervaded by the essential character of virtue. This is the love of God, that ye keep his commandments. This is the most gratifying return unto him, that ye do those things. which are pleasing in his sight. And thus it is, that the love of gratitude may be vindicated in its character of moral worth, from its first commencement in the heart to its ultimate effect on the walk and conversation. It is originally distinct from selfishness in its object; and it derives a virtuousness at its very outset, from the aspirations of a soul bent on the acquirement of it, because bent on being what it ought to be; and it is sustained, both in life and in exercise, by such habits of thought as are of voluntary cultivation; and it nobly sustains an aspect of moral righteousness onwards to the final result of its operation on the character, by setting him who is under its power, on a career of obedience to God, and in

troducing him to an arduous contest of principle, with all the influences of sense and of the world.

If, to render an affection virtuous, the will acting under a sense of duty, should be concerned either in producing or in perpetuating it; then the love of moral esteem coming into the heart as an involuntrry sensation, may, in certain circumstances, have as little of the character of virtue as the love of gratitude. In this respect, both these affections are upon a footing with each other; and the first ought not to have been exalted at the expense of the second. That either be upheld within us in our present state, there must, in fact, be the putting forth of the same voluntary control over the thoughts and contemplations of the understanding; the same active exercise of faith; the same laborious resistance to all those urgencies of sense which would expel from the mind the idea of an unseen and spiritual object; the same remembrance of God sustained by effort, and prayer, and meditation.

II. We now feel ourselves in a condition to speak of the Gospel, in its free and gratuitous character; to propose its blessings as a gift; to hold out the pardon, and the strength, and all the other privileges which it proclaims to believers, as so many articles for their immediate acceptance; to make it known to men that they are not to delay their compliance with the overtures of mercy, till the disinterested love of God arises in their hearts; but that

they have a warrant for entering even now, into instant reconciliation with God. Nor are we to dread the approach of any moral contamination, though when, after their eyes are opened to the marvellous spectacle of a pleading, and offering, and beseeching God, holding out eternal life unto the guilty, through the propitiation which his own Son hath made for them, they should, from that moment, open their whole soul, to the influences of gratitude, and love the God who thus hath first loved them.

We conclude then with remarking, that the whole of this argument gives us another view of the importance of faith. We do not say all for it that we ought, when we say, that by faith we are justified in the sight of God. By faith also our hearts are purified. It is in fact the primary and the presiding principle of regeneration. It brings the heart into contact with that influence, by which the love of gratitude is awakened. The love of God to us, if it is not believed, will exert no more power over our affections, than if it were a nonentity. They are the preachers of faith, then, who alone deal out to their hearers, the elementary and pervading spirit of the Christian morality. And the men who have been stigmatized as the enemies of good works, are the very men, who are most sedulously employed in depositing within you, that good seed which has its fruit unto holiness. We are far from asserting, that the agency of grace is not concerned, in every step of that process, by which a sinner is con

ducted from the outset of his conversion, to the state of being perfect, and complete in the whole will of God. But there is a harmony between the processes of grace and of nature; and in the same manner, as in human society, the actual conviction of a neighbour's good-will to me, takes the precedency in point of order of any returning movement of gratitude on my part, so, in the great concerns of our fellowship with God, my belief that he loves me, is an event prior and preparatory to the event of my loving him. So that the primary obstacle to the love of God is not the want of human gratitude, but the want of human faith. The reason why man is not excited to the love of God by the revelation of God's love to him, is just because he does not believe that revelation. This is the barrier which lies between the guilty, and their offended Lawgiver. It is not the ingratitude of man, but the incredulity of man, that needs, in the first instance, to be overcome. It is the sullenness, and the hardness, and the obstinacy of unbelief which stands as a gate of iron, between him and his enlargement. Could the kindness of God, in Christ Jesus, be seen by him, the softening of a kindness back again, would be felt by him. And let us cease to wonder, then, at the preachers of the gospel, when they lay upon belief all the stress of a fundamental operation;-when they lavish so much of their strength on the establishment of a principle, which is not only initial, but indispensable; when they try se

strenuously to charm that into existence, without which all the elements of a spiritual obedience are in a state of dormancy or of death ;— when they labour at the only practicable way, by which the heart of a sinner can be touched, and attracted towards God;--when they try so repeatedly, to hold and to fasten him, by that link which God himself hath put into their hands-and bring the mighty principle to bear upon their hearers, which any one of us may exemplify upon the poorest, and by which both HOWARD and, FRY have tried with success, to soften and to reclaim the most worthless of mankind.

This also suggests a practical direction to Christians, for keeping themselves in the love of God. They must keep themselves in the habit, and in the exercise of faith. They must hold fast that conviction in their minds, the presence of which is indispensable to the keeping of that affection in their hearts. This is one of the methods recommended by the apostle Jude, when he tells his disciples to build themselves up on their most holy f faith. This direction to you is both intelliglible and practicable. Keep in view the truths which you have learned. Cherish that belief of them which you already possess. Recall thein to your thoughts, and, in general, they will not come alone, but they will come accompanied by their own power, and their own evidence. You may as well think of maintaining a steadfast attachment to your friend, after you have