is not at your option whether you will profess religion. You have professed it; and do profess it, as often as you go to the house of worship.'

I know there are many who shrink from what is technically, and after all, rather unfortunately termed a profession of religion, on account of the prejudices and puerile distinctions of men. I know that there are an unreflecting few, who are ready to catch with eagle eye every blemish, and to proclaim every inconsistency in the conduct of those who belong to the church; and this too, with as much self-complacency and tranquillity, as if they were under no pledge or obligation to obey God, or to be Christians. But surely it is time to disregard these unreasonable and unfounded notions. Whoever intends to be an honest man, a virtuous and good citizen, a just dealer, an obliging neighbour, a dutiful child, a devoted Christian, doing with cheerfulness, and with patience suffering the will of God in all things, may with equal propriety come to the church and the communion table; and whoever does not intend to sustain such a character, cannot vindicate his consistency in coming to either.

4. Do we then say, it may be finally asked,-do we say that the communion is to be approached lightly, or undevoutly and carelessly to be celebrated? God forbid! We do not make void the strictness of the christian precepts-yea, rather we establish it. We do not say, or propose, that there should be less seriousness and tenderness at the conmunion; but, that in prayer, in meditation, in the ordinary services of our worship, there should be more. We protest against that perverted, yet prevalent notion, that if a man goes to the temple it is nought, but if he goes to the communion table, he is a debtor he has laid himself under an awful obligation. Every man is laid under the most solemn obligation, by the bare knowledge that there is a God; and he professes this obligation by coming to the place of His worship. And by violating this pledge, he contracts as deep a guilt in the sight of God, as if he violated the sacramental vows of the communion table. Nay, there is a pledge in every man's soul, stronger than any form, or circumstance, or place can impose ;-the pledge of reason the bond of conscience. These distinctions among our duties and obligations are all the work of man; the equal and solemn injunction of every duty upon all rational beings, is the precept and will of God.

D.

THE BEGINNING AND PERFECTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

THERE are two very opposite sets of views and feelings, with which the mind goes back to the beginning of almost every thing;-of the world, of human life, of the various gifts and dispensations of God. According to one, the past is dwelt on with a fond admiration; nothing is so pure and happy as it was at first; the original state of every blessing is extolled and magnified, as being then in its early freshness and beauty, which have since been fading. According to the other, there is no disposition to heighten in imagination the advantages or the charm of what has long preceded, but rather to make the best of what is present and to point out-if they are to be found-its superior benefits or worthier prospects. According to one, declension is traced, and we indulge in regretting the better days that have gone. According to the other, progress is discerned, and we learn to be thankful and to hope on. There is something disheartening in the one, which is but poorly compensated by a show of reverence or sensibility for what has departed. The other encourages us, that still higher good is to be attained; that improvement and not decay is the world's course and law; and we look and press forward. It can hardly be made a question which of these two habits of thought and disposition is the more common. Men have always been inclined to exaggerate the value of what is lost, and to expatiate on some previous condition of what they still possess. 'In the beginning it was not so,' they are forever ready to say, when crosses come, and changes trouble them, and signs of imperfection appear; though it may not be so always,' would be a more manly sentiment, and nearer to the truth. They have erred in looking back for the golden times, which they should rather love to anticipate, and do their little to hasten. The idea of a primeval paradise has prevailed over the earth, and is a beautiful tradition; but philanthropy and religious philosophy love better to see in the order of Providence, the proofs of a gracious and forever expanding design, the promises of future and greater knowledge, worth and happiness. It is not the way of heaven with our race, to begin with that which is perfect, and let decline and corruption succeed, and leave men to feel their way back after for

gotten truth, and repine for a perished glory. No. It is leading them up by a thousand ways and a various discipline to eminences yet never attained. That is not only a fond but a mischievous mistake, which makes us dote on the recollection or the fancy of the things that are behind, instead of reaching forth to those that are before. We live in an advancing, and not in a ruined world; and the maturity of life with all its cares is better than the childhood which it would recall; and it is the nature of every good possession to grow more noble and useful, and to enlarge itself.

These remarks, which are of a very general nature, are applicable to Christianity itself. It is a blessing, which is not in any sense to stand still, but to be improved. It has never yet shown itself in its entire purity, or its full operation. It is not so much to be restored to any former standard of now tarnished excellence, as to be carried on and perfected. It is to precede and keep in advance of all the intellectual and moral progress, which it is a blessed instrument of promoting. While in some respects it is the actual and finished model of sacred instruction, in others it rather furnishes but the ideal, according to which it is to be yet more gloriously fashioned as the mind moves onward. All that it has yet been is but the earnest of what it is to be hereafter. 'Leaving therefore the word of the beginning of Christ,' as it is written in the Hebrews, 'let us go on unto perfection.'

The very nature of the Gospel, the circumstances of its appearing, the form which those circumstances compelled it to assume, and the character of its history and records as they have been transmitted to us, all confirm the conclusion, that it is a revelation intended to be progressive, a plan that is forever looking further, a testimony that adapted itself at first to a peculiar state of society, and is always to preserve a correspondence with the intelligence and wants of mankind. Its nature is spirit and life, a heaven-sent spirit, a heaven-inspired life; and these it will always retain, though forms may change, and many opinions that now seem essential be dismembered from it. Those circumstances just spoken of belonged at least many of them-only to the commencement of our religion; were but the incidents that accompanied it, and no part of its substance; were but as the infant's dress and the needy fortunes of the Saviour of mankind. A similar

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assertion is true of the sacred documents of our faith; prepared as they were for temporary use, and filled as they are seen to be with subjects of local interest or popular accommodation, the perished peculiarities of a former period and race. They do not constitute our religion; they only instruct us in its principles, and assure us of the foundation on which it rests. What then is the beginning, and what the perfection of the Gospel? Let us look at all those periods, which can be supposed in any view of the subject to be the beginning of the Gospel; and see if in any of them it appears in its full beauty, and vigour and efficacy; or whether we shall not be constrained,--or rather be rejoiced,-to acknowledge that what is perfect in it did not at once spring forth,-has not yet come. Shall we trace it back to its remotest sources among the institutions and bards of the Hebrews, and the dark mountains of prophecy, before its own recorded history begins;-before John cried in the wilderness, or Joseph and Mary rejoiced over their firstborn at Bethlehem? We shall not surely find there what we seek for in it; for all is obscure, uncertain, unaccomplished. The scheme of preparation which led the way to Christianity, is for the most part but dimly discerned, and unsatisfactory, even in what is plainly to be perceived; mixed with the doubtfulness of old traditions and with systems of superannuated errours. We see, indeed, some majestic forms, and hear many strains of divinest eloquence and holiest song. There stand the goodly fellowship of the prophets, contending against priestly craft and a people's iniquities, rebuking princes and setting themselves against nations, announcing the will and law, the threatenings and promises of heaven. But behind them are signs indistinct and shadowy; the veiled symbols of a broken covenant; the faint images of a fallen ritual; the temple's broad outline and all the vain pageantry of rite and sacrifice; the fading visions of temporal grandeur; the mystic symbols of commemoration or of promise; ambiguous oracles, and the mercy-seat concealed. We turn away from a period, in which we discover at most only imperfect intimations of the future purposes of God, and go on to the first and clearer scenes which the new covenant discloses. But even here is

all finished? or have we still not arrived at perfection?

Let our next field of view be the personal ministry of our Saviour himself. It was a glorious time for the world, when

it was visited by that day-spring, which prophets and kings had not been permitted to witness; which David saw not amidst the splendour of his royalty, and the richer light of his devotions; which the seer saw not through the kindlings of his most fervent inspiration; when God chose and sent forth as a deliverer his beloved son, to be to the ignorant a divine wisdom, to the weak a divine power, to the tried and the contrite the compassion of a father in heaven. We cannot dwell with too profound a reverence, with too quickened a sensibility, on the instructions which flowed from the lips of that anointed one; or the unparalleled spirit, the moral sublimity, that marked his virtues; on the wonderful events that gathered about his career; on the tender associations that cling to his memory. No fear that men should ever prize at too much, his doctrines of truth, by which they are enlightened; of grace, through which they find favour; of hope in which they may obtain rest; his life for their example and his death for their deliverance. But what remains of his history plainly shows us that his kingdom was then scarcely begun ;-that his work, though finished when he gave up the ghost, was but the accomplishment of his own ministry, not the completion of the Gospel; was but the impulse that was to perpetuate itself in a thousand directions, and with an increasing power, through aftergenerations. He has himself declared that he left many things untold, for future time to disclose, and other circumstances. The people were not ready for them, and the disciples whom he had selected as little as the rest. In many things he accommodated himself, as every reformer must, to the state of society in which he spoke, and to the impressions of those whom he addressed. In many he left his religion within the limits of the Jewish peculiarity, till it was time for it to come abroad, and till the long consequences of what he had spoken and done should disclose themselves more fully, and execute their work. Of the meaning of his cautious and half veiled teaching, who seem to have understood less than they who were always with him?--they, who to the last had no idea of the high purposes of his mission, who were scattered when he was smitten, and are even found dreaming of Israel's kingdom, when he came among them again from the dead.. The evangelical records commence with a preparation and an assurance, a solemn preparation,-the cry of the austere Bap