neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." (Rev. iii. 16.) Tremble at this awful denunciation, lest it should come upon you.

Begin, from the perusal of these pages, to seek after higher degrees of personal religion. Be not satisfied with present attainments. Even the apostle Paul resolved to forget the things that were behind, in a desire to press on to greater excellence. And can you be satisfied? Beware of making the perilous, yet frequent experiment of ascertaining with how little piety you can reach heaven. They who are seeking just enough religion for this purpose, will find out to their eternal confusion, that they had not enough. The love of God, like the love of money, is never satisfied with its possession. Real grace in the soul is ever seeking after increase, and any approach to contentment with what you have is a proof you have none. You must grow. It is your solemn duty. God demands it; your happiness and your safety require it. It is as much your duty to be eminent Christians, as it is that of others. No reason for this applies to them which does not equally apply to you. A higher degree of holiness is attainable by you. The grace that is necessary for this is within your reach. You are not to imagine that there is any peculiarity in your case, which forbids the hope of improvement. God's grace is all-sufficient; the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. You are commanded as matter of duty, invited as matter of privilege, to be eminent in religion. O take up the wish, the purpose, the determination. Make it an object that you must accomplish, an attainment you must secure. Set about it in earnest. Give yourself to reading, to meditation and prayer. Set apart time, sufficient time for all the purposes of private devotion; for communion with your own heart, and for communion

with God. Resist the encroaching, absorbing destructive influence of the world in any form. Consider you have a soul to be saved, a hell to avoid, a heaven to obtain. Your profession cannot do this for you: rely not upon that; feel as if the work were all to be begun; let there be the same earnestness, the same diligence, the same solicitude, as there were when you commenced the pursuit of eternal life. Adopt the Bible afresh as the Book of books: let nothing supplant this precious volume. One great cause why the piety of this age is so feeble and so languid, is because the Bible has in many cases been swept away by a flood of uninspired publications. The pure milk of the word has been neglected, or has been so diluted, as to leave but little nourishment in the mixture; and the new-born babe, as matter of course, has remained dwarfish and sickly. Even the biography of the most distinguished saints, which ought to form a part of the Christian's reading, and is eminently calculated to fan the flame of devotion in the soul, ought not to be allowed to displace the word of God. Again, I say, professors, awake, arise, shine. "To be carnally minded is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace. If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."-Col. iii. 1—3.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DUTY OF PROFESSORS TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF EVIL.

66 GOD hath called us unto holiness."-1 Thes. iv. 7. Impressive idea! It is our very vocation to be holy. Holiness was the image of God in which man was created, against which the envy and malignity of Satan were directed, and which he dashed at and destroyed, when he found himself unable to reach the divine original. Holiness is the end of all God's dispensations towards his people, whether of Providence, of Grace, or of Glory. Holiness will constitute the perfection of man's moral nature in heaven; it is the spotless garment in which the seraph ministers before the throne of the Eternal; it is more, for it is the beauty of the Divine Being himself; not so much a separate attribute of his nature, as the perfection of all his attributes. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all;' " and from the midst of his excellent glory, he is ever calling to us and saying, "Be ye holy, as I am holy." True religion is conformity to God, and God is holy. Herein is Cristianity distinguished from idolatry, and its infinite superiority above the classic paganism of antiquity demonstrated. Some of the philosophers, especially of the Stoic sect, delivere many fine sentiments and even beautiful maxims of a stern and rigid morality, but their ethics had no connexion

with their theology. "The gods of the Pagan heaven were little better than men's own evil qualities exalted to the sky, to be thence reflected back upon them, invested with Olympian charms and splendours. A mighty labour of human depravity to confirm its own dominion! It would translate itself to heaven, and usurp divinity, in order to come down thence with a sanction for man to be wicked." So that while men in Christian lands become wicked for want of religion, those that dwell in heathen countries become wicked by religion. The moralist and the priest are in opposition to each other, and the former, if he would succeed in making men better, must caution them against allowing the latter to bring them within the precincts of a temple, or introduce them to the presence of a God. But it is the excellence and glory of Christianity, that its refined morality is founded upon and arises from, its pure theology; which contains every possible motive and every necessary means to holiness. Our great business then in this world is to be made and kept holy. Our whole life is to be one incessant struggle against that moral evil, which is all around us and within us. "We are called," I repeat the expression, "to holiness."

How emphatic, how comprehensive, is the apostolic admonition which is the subject of this chapter, "abstain from all appearance of evil."-1 Thes. v. 22. Some expositors render the expression thus, "abstain from every sort or kind of evil." In this sense, it is a most important precept. Evils are of various kinds and degrees, and it is a Christian's duty to avoid them all. He must not reconcile himself to any one thing that is contrary to God's word. He must declare war. and maintain irreconcilable hostility against every sin.

But, probably, the true meaning of the text is the commonly received one, that we are not only to abstain from those things that are really and manifestly evil, but from such as are only doubtfully and in appearance such. We must avoid not only the identical thing itself, but all shows and resemblances of it.

1. Professors should abstain from the smallest beginnings of evil, the first buddings of sin; those things which would not be noticed in others, and are made apparent, like faint stains upon cambric, only by the white ground of their profession; and which after all, in the estimation of many, are so small and insignificant, as to be rather appearances than realities. Little sins lead on to greater ones, and if they did not, and were not feared on account of what they may lead to, should be shunned for their own sakes. A female, vain of her beauty, is annoyed not only by sores upon the countenance, but by freckles. A professor is not to be vain of the beauty of holiness, but still he is to be watchful of it, and must therefore avoid the smallest disfigurement of it by sin.

2. We must not venture to the extreme verge of what is good, nor try how near we can come to evil, without actually committing it. The boundary, as I have elsewhere remarked, between right and wrong, is an invisible line, which many rash adventurers have passed, ere they were aware they were approaching near to it. Besides, though it may be quite perceptible, and avoided by those who are near, yet persons who are close to it may appear to others, who look from a distance, to be gone over it. It is a most dangerous thing for ourselves, to go as near sin as we can without committing it; and as to observers, there are many to whom we are certain,