nor spiritual feeling of any kind. It is the vainest of all things to have a law, and judge by the culprit's own ideas of his own ability. And if this principle, so commonly applied to divine judgment, were acted upon at human tribunals, you might as well burn the statute-book at once, and shut the door of every court. Do I say that God will punish any one who has done his best, or that He requires of us to do more than we are able? No; but He is to be judge of that, not we ourselves. That question, whether we have done our best, is the very count upon which we are to be indicted at the last tribunal, and fairly tried out and out by impartial justice. But do not imagine that God will bow Himself on that day from His lofty judgment-seat, and sist all procedure upon a reference to ourselves whether we had done our best-that, in short, He will allow every criminal to do the office of a grand jury to himself, and if he ignore the bill, pass him untried and uncondemned. But to stop all mouths, say I were to put that question this moment, Hast thou done thy best? couldst thou answer, Thou hast? Then thy conscience never reproved thee; then thou hast never known regret or remorse, never thought what thou durst not speak, nor spoken what thou would have fain recalled, nor done what thou heartily repented; and thou hast whiled away no time, and shut thine ear to no wholesome counsel, and shut thy conscience on no light of conviction, and indulged thy mind in no prejudice. Now, if thou thinkest so, ask thy neighbour if he thinketh so; ask the wife of thy bosom, who certainly were not willing to divulge thy faults. All these subterfuges, springing from pride, and vanity, and fondness of sin, must be scattered; we must bring ourselves bona fide to the measure of the law, and distinctly perceive our deficiency; and we must not blink the consequences of unrepented guilt, nor shut out of view the terrible punishment of sinners through any sentimental disrelish of horrid things. Nay, it is the meditation of these awful issues, and the imagination of that crisis, when this law, which now speaketh in a still, small voice, will speak in thunder as it did from Sinai, whence it came-when the array of the last assize shall display itself, and every fleet minister of execution shall stand ready harnessed at his post,-the mustering of thoughts

like these, make the unrelenting soul of man quake for his sin like the timid child. And such thoughts, we think, are generally the beginning of repentance; and it was by such thundering denunciations that the Baptist brought the people to the waters of repentance.

But here it endeth not.

There must be moreover a confession of our sins, which were vain unless we knew the humble confession of them would find an audience on high. But this we are assured it will, through the blood of Christ. "If we confess our sins, God is righteous and just to forgive us our sins, and the blood of Christ cleanseth from all iniquity."

LECTURE IV.

LUKE III. IO.

THIS "HIS is the first baptismal service upon record. And if anything were needed as a commentary upon the sacrament of baptism, we should refer to the stern and severe welcome to the fount, upon which we have already discoursed, and to those imperious commandments to all who came. But there needeth no commentary upon either of the Christian sacraments; whereof the one before us signifies by its very emblems an ablution and purification from former uncleanness-the other, a divine nourishment in a new life, and a sacred union to the body of Christ;-the two taken together presenting to our eye the two great principles of our dispensation—repentance towards God, and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore it doth at all times become the ministers of this ordinance, at its celebration, to discourse to the people present upon their sinfulness by nature, and the necessity of repentance and regeneration, and a life of holiness; as at the celebration of the other, it becomes them to discourse of the union with Christ, and the privileges and enjoyments and duties of His members. Of the former of these, the Baptist hath set us the example in the exhortation to all ranks to amend their ways; and in the latter, our Lord hath set us the example in that divine discourse recorded in the Gospel of John. Of these two models of discoursing over the two sacraments of the Church of Christ, it now falleth to our lot to expound and apply the former.

The uncivil epithets, and harsh upbraidings, and gloomy forebodings of the Baptist had the effect, not of alienating and disaffecting the people, but of making them gentle and docile, because they perceived in him the spirit of the ancient prophets. The dulness and monotony of forms, and the weari

some traditions and customs, had not so degraded the voice of nature within the breast of the people, that she should not know and acknowledge the force of truth. In the views and doctrines of one who had studied in the desert, and perused nature in her severest mood, and derived his theology fresh from the Word and Spirit of God, there must have been an originality and freshness of divine unction highly relishable to one who had been led with the stale and unspiritual traditions of men. In the inward principle of repentance, a change of feeling, a change of soul, as well as a change of life, there is something infinitely nobler than in the eternal drudgery of outward observances. The spirit becomes her own master. The streams flow from an inward fountain. The life and the heart are in union, and there is no master between them, save the invisible mastery of God. Nature speaks for this selfgovernment, she desires to be set right inwardly by divine teaching and reformation, that she may be outwardly right. She hateth, by blind prescription of any man, or any positive rules, to be watched and constrained into the proper course. The Baptist's style of preaching, though severe, commends itself to nature's highest and noblest moods; and when we add to this the Baptist's personal accompaniments, we shall not wonder at the sway which he wielded over every class of men, the most hardened and the most fierce. Around a man who can despise accommodations and conveniences, and deal with nature in ancient simplicity and independence, and move amongst her social and religious institutions, like a traveller from another world, free to judge, and censure, and approve, as having himself nothing at stake,-around such a man there is a moral grandeur and authority to which none but the narrowest and most bigoted minds will refuse a certain awe and reverence. And when such a personage assumeth to himself divine commission, and publisheth new truth with divine authority, and rebuketh all wickedness, and scorneth all consequences, he taketh by the natural right of the wiser, the bolder, and the better man, a high place above those who feel themselves enslaved and shackled by customs which they despise.

Therefore, not without sufficient cause, it came to pass

that people of all descriptions, and also of various nations, Jews and Gentiles, excommunicated publicans and soldiers of old Rome, levied from every quarter of the earth, overawed and tamed, came to this wayfarer of the desert, asking him with humility and simplicity what they ought to do. "What shall we do then?" Oh, it is a noble triumph which this forerunner of Christ achieved, to lay prostrate before the edge of truth the distinctions of society, and the pride of the heart and the pride of life, and every other thing which exalteth itself against Christraising the valleys, levelling the mountains, straightening the crookedness, and smoothing the roughness of the people! For here they are of every class beseeching to know what it behoved them to do against that terrible coming whereof he spake. First came the people, by which you are to understand the mixed and indiscriminate assemblage; after them came the publicans, who were a hated and excommunicated tribe, because they ministered to the rapaciousness of the conqueror; after them the soldiers, who were the conquerors themselves. These three classes came in turns, according to their moral rank-first, the people who were living under the law, and whose, by right of many promises, was the Messiah whose advent was proclaimed; then the publicans, who, though of the nation, were held as traitors to the heaven-bestowed law and constitution of the country; finally, the soldiers, who had brought the country into subjection, and might fear the severest treatment from such a union. They came humbly praying to be informed what it became them to do. And the Baptist, who yesterday was a solitary dweller in the desert, and to-day is a counsellor of multitudes, dispenseth to each rank and class of men that advice, and openeth up that walk of repentance and reformation, which became their several vocations in the community.

In commenting upon these three several injunctions to the people, the publicans, and the soldiers, it would be altogether unsuitable to the style of modern life to make an express discourse to the people generally, a second to those in public vocations, and a third to military men, expounding to each that line of duty which becometh them as persons baptized