ation upon your own hearts, one of the first effects will be, that YOU WILL BE ANXIOUS TO SHOW ITS HOLY TENDENCY in your family, in your neighbourhood. Strive to take away and lessen stumbling-blocks. Unite in those great religious institutions which cast a brilliant light over a nation, and shed their glory through the Heathen and Mahomedan countries. Never does the genuine bearing of Christianity appear more attractive, than in self-denying schemes of benevolent activity, which have no other object than the glory of God and the honour of religion and the good of souls. The working of such institutions upon the public opinion of a nation, the tendency they have to unite a people in the more ardent pursuit of personal piety, the sway they exercise over thousands who might never otherwise have attended to the gospel, the hope they furnish of a further revival of religion, and of the divine blessing and favour upon governments, churches, nations, render them amongst the most important and promising signs of the present times.

3. Finally, PRAY FOR THE COPIOUS INFLUENCES OF GRACE, and the co-operating aids of an almighty providence to hasten on the blessed period, foretold in the prophetic page, when

THE TENDENCIES OF CHRISTIANITY SHALL BE

COME EFFECTS; when the highest welfare and

happiness of individuals and nations shall be actually accomplished. The ordinary assistances of the Holy Spirit are never wanting to the church. The innate power and virtue of Christianity depends on these assistances. All the bearing

and struggling of doctrine and precepts and ministerial exhortation and example, and the labours of the spiritual church, would be in vain, without that animating power of the Spirit, which, like the principle of life in the works of nature, gives virtue and fruitfulness to the means employed. Christianity is never to be separated from the constant operation of its divine Author. But, besides these usual measures of grace, there have been, in various ages of the church, peculiar effusions of the influences of the Spirit; a general rekindling of the holy fire has taken place; ministers and people have been raised up to call a sleeping world to its true interests; Christianity has been vindicated from its false friends and its torpid and selfish adherents; its native doctrines have been asserted; the power of God has been humbly implored; the offices of parochial ministration have received a new impulse; the sacraments, the public prayers, the reading and preaching of God's word have been revived in their first freshness; souls have been converted in large numbers; bodies of spiritual

and faithful believers have been raised up; the holy lives and active exertions of Christians have discovered fresh means for propagating the gospel; all has assumed a new appearance.

Such was the revival vouchsafed at the time of the blessed Reformation; fresh showers of grace were granted in a copious measure, and half Europe awoke at the call of truth.

We need a similar gift of the divine mercy now to bring on the future glories of the church; to give the operations of Christianity their full play; to remove interposing obstacles; to bind Satan, the great spiritual adversary, and turn the tendencies of our religion into ONE GRAND RESULT. All is moving towards this blessed end. Christianity has in itself all the innate causes of the salvation of the world; the prophetic word encourages our hopes; the close of the mystic period of the apostacies of the east and west approaches. Lift up your heads, then, my Christian brethren, for your redemption draweth nigh. All events in the world and in the church seem to conspire to this consummation. And, as the great principle of gravitation in the works of creation, is drawing all matter towards the sun, the centre-object of the system, around which, so far as intervening obstacles allow, every thing is revolving; whilst no part is unaffected with the secret bias impressed on uni

versal nature by the hand of the Creator; so is every thing gravitating, in the events of providence and the dealings of grace, towards the Sun of Righteousness, the great centre-object, around which all is moving, so far as interposing hindrances permit; whilst nothing is exempt from the secret tendency impressed on things by the merciful will of our gracious God; nor will the operation cease till all revolve around the glorious source of light and salvation; and, drawing warmth and life from his immediate beams, display, through eternity, his glory, as the only source of all their irradiation and all their joy.

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LECTURE XIX.

THE TEST TO WHICH EVERY ONE MAY BRING THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, BY HUMBLY SUBMITTING TO ITS DIRECTIONS, AND MAKING A TRIAL FOR HIMSELF OF ITS PROMISED BLESSINGS.

1 JOHN V. 10.

He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself.

Ir may naturally be asked, after all we have said in our former Lectures on the divine excellency and holy effects of the Christian doctrine, whether there is any way in which a sincere inquirer may bring to the test of his own observation the truth of some of these statementswhether he cannot rise above a mere conviction of truth, to an experience and perception of the blessings proffered by Christianity.

To this question we answer, that he may, and