tion, it is implied that all evil habits, and the sin which so easily besets an individual, are broken up by the roots and utterly abandoned. Even in mere outward reformation, the drunkard is to become sober; the thief to become honest; the Sabbathbreaker a strict observer of the holy day; the liar is to speak the truth; the adulterer to become chaste; the swearer to abstain from his blasphemies. All this is hard, and yet it is only a part of this great work. All this is hard, and yet all this, even to outward reformation, must be accomplished: for the word of God, in its dreadful catalogue of exclusions, has given us a most significant and fearful transcript of the mind of God as it relates to this business-" Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." It is evidently a great work then, brethren, to break up all evil habits, and become reformed. But great as this is, it is only a part, and a very small part too, of the great work of which I speak for it is very possible that there may be such a thing as outward reformation of evils, where there is no living principle at the bottom. The drunkard may become sober, because he is ruining his health and reputation; the thief may become honest, for fear of the consequences of his sin; the liar may speak the truth, because it may cost him too much to continue in his falsehoods; the adulterer may become chaste, because he would repair the waste of a ruined constitution; the swearer may leave his courses, because it makes him

less reputable. But all these may be done, and yet the individual be at an immeasurable distance from the kingdom of heaven, because it is all outward. I would not decry the relative value which mere outward reformation has. It is best, in every view in which the subject may be placed before the individual himself, and before society; but mere outward reformation, if it arises not from the converted feeling and character of heart, has nothing in it valuable towards God. Let me offer you a familiar illustration. You will doubtless, my brethren, grant, that if a stream from which you had been accustomed to draw the supply by which your thirst was satisfied, should become poisoned and embittered in its waters, it would do little good to rectify, even by some potent mixture, the little spot where it passed by your habitation. Your healing mixture would be floated down the stream, and the waters be as poisoned and embittered as before. No: you would ascend up to the fountain from which it flowed; you would there seek the cause, and if you found there some foreign body which produced the mischief, you would expel it at the instant, and the stream would regain its purity-you might then drink and be satisfied. Outward reformation is like throwing the healing mixture in the stream as it glides along; it does nothing permament. Make the heart good, and then the stream which flows from it will be likewise good. And this leads me to the higher aspect of this subject, to which I have already alluded.

The work in which every individual must be engaged if he would be saved, is a great work, because one of the leading objects to be accomplished is his change of heart, embracing the principles and mo

tives by which he is actuated, and the whole tenor of life and conversation which flow on from those motives and principles as the pure streams of a purified fountain. I suppose that careless, and unconcerned, and impenitent sinners, may at once retort, Why, a change of heart is the work of God, therefore what have we to do with it? This, my brethren, is true or false, just as you may happen correctly or incorrectly to understand what is meant by a change of heart. If you mean that the infusion of all spiritual principles is the work of the Spirit of God, it is true. But if you mean that you have no concern with it, nothing to do, it is false. What else does God mean when he says, "make you a new heart?" The heart is put for the affections. Your affections are on the world. Do you mean to say that you cannot change the objects of affection? If you do, it. is false for you change your objects of affection continually. But I do not wish to insist on what may be deemed a metaphysical application of the subject.

I am prepared, my friends, to grant all that the sinner can possibly demand on this subject, and then out of his own mouth condemn him. It is unquestionably true, that the sinner can no more by his independent efforts, create his own heart anew in holiness, than he can create another world like this, so wonderful in all its developments of wisdom and of goodness. But this species of inability no more lets him loose from the necessity of the work of his own salvation, in all that it is appropriate for him to do, than does the inability of the husbandman to produce the crop for which he ploughs and sows, lets him loose from the necessity of labour. Mute nature, and if I may so speak, the native instinct of

man, reads him a lesson of wonderful improvement on this subject. When I pass by the field of luxuriant grain just ready for the sickle of the reaper; and when I reflect that but a few months before, the industrious husbandman had placed the seed on the ground, and had cultivated the earth with the sweat of his brow, and had watched the silent process of vegetation, I turn at once to the wonderful analogy which nature bears to the economy of grace. Suppose that in passing by the door of the farmer you should see him sitting at his ease, his arms folded on his bosom,-suppose that you ask him what are his prospects of a harvest; and that with a look of mighty wise self-complacency he returns you for answer: The business of vegetation is a business of nature, or of nature's God; I cannot make the seed grow; it is not in my power to accomplish any of these purposes, and therefore I shall quietly wait to see what is to come to pass. What a poor miserable reasoner such a man would be. Your answer to him would be: My friend, you arrogate a vast deal to yourself. God never asked any of your assistance in this business. He has, in his infinite mercy, laid you down your course. You are to plough, and to sow, and to reap; and if you do not, you will starve, as you deserve, for your folly and madness. Does ploughing and sowing give a harvest? No. All the ploughing and sowing under heaven cannot give a harvest. But this is the fact, no man gets his harvest who does not plough and sow.

Now, my dear brethren, when any one of you desire to hug to your bosom this same wretched device of Satan, and just seek to quiet your own consciences in this work of salvation by saying-I can

not change my heart, that is God's appropriate business, and, therefore, when he chooses to do it, he will do it you make this one fatal mistake; God never asked you to change your own heart in the sense in which you choose to interpret that expression. He never put that business into your hands, and it is well for sinners that he never did put it in their hands, for if he had, there never would have been for your souls the shadow of a hope. It is a great work now, then it would have been an impossibility. And yet, if you wrap yourselves up in the complacency of spiritual sloth, and refuse to obey the command of God because you cannot accomplish the change which alone can fit you for heaven, like the vineyard of the man void of understanding, your soul will be a spiritual waste, and you will beg in harvest and have nothing. I take it as a truth of Scripture which it were beyond all reason to deny, and on the verge of impiety to question, that God never required at your hands that which was plainly and palpably impossible It is beyond the reach of my feeble abilities to explain to man the perfect consistency between the sovereignty of God and the free agency of man; but this I know, "that secret things belong to the Lord our God, that which is revealed to us and to our children," and the free agency of man is written in his own experience, and on every page of Scripture. You know, and I know, that we are free to choose or to refuse, and it is this freedom of choice which belongs essentially to the work of salvation I am now considering. And recollect, my friends, that it is by the Gospel we are to be judged. When God says "As I live I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked;" "let the wicked forsake his way, and