offered, and much time spent in reading and meditation, you have no reason to think that these things have made any atonement for your sins, or rendered your case any the less. deplorable, or left you any other than a wretched, lost, miserable, guilty and ruined

creature.

Natural, unrenewed men, would be glad to have something to make up for the want of sincere love and real grace in their hearts; and many do great things to make up for the want of it, while others are willing to suffer great things. But alas! how little does it all signify! No matter what they may do or suffer, it does not change their character; and if they build their hopes upon it, they do but delude themselves, and feed upon the East wind. If such be your case, consider how miserable you will be while you live without hope in the only true source of hope, and how miserable when you come to die, when the sight of the king of terrors will show the nothingness and vanity of all your doings! How miserable when you see Christ coming to judgment in the clouds of heaven! Then you will be willing to do and suffer anything, that you may be accepted by him. But doings

or sufferings will not avail. They will not atone for your sins, or give you God's favor, or save you from the overwhelming storms of his wrath. Rest, then, on nothing that you have done or suffered, or that you can do or suffer; but rest on Christ. Let your heart be filled with sincere love to him; and then, at the last great day, he will own you as his follower and as his friend. The subject,

3. Exhorts all, earnestly to cherish sincere Christian love in their hearts.-If it be so, that this is of such great and absolute necessity, then let it be the one great thing that you seek. Seek it with diligence and prayer; and seek it of God, and not of yourself. He only can bestow it. It is something far above the unassisted power of nature; for though there may be great performances, and great sufferings, too, yet without sincere love they are all in vain. Such doings and sufferings may, indeed, be required of us, as the followers of Christ, and in the way of duty; but we are not to rest in them, or feel that they have any merit or worthiness in themselves. At best they are but the outward evidence and the outflowing of a right spirit in the heart. Be exhorted, then, as the great thing, to cherish

sincere love, or Christian charity in the heart. It is that which you must have; and there is nothing that will help your case without it. Without it, all will, in some respect, but tend to deepen your condemnation, and to sink you to but lower depths in the world of despair!

CHARITY

LECTURE IV.

DISPOSES US MEEKLY TO BEAR THE INJURIES RECEIVED FROM OTHERS.

Charity suffereth long and is kind."-1 CORINTHIANS Xiii. 4

THE Apostle, in the previous verses, as we have seen, sets forth how great and essential a thing charity, or a spirit of Christian love, is, in Christianity that it is far more necessary and excellent than any of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit; that it far exceeds all external performances and sufferings; and, in short, that it is the sum of all that is distinguishing and saving in Christianity-the very life and soul of all religion, without which, though we give all our goods to feed the poor, and our bodies to be burned, we are nothing. And now he proceeds, as his subject naturally leads him, to show the excellent nature of charity, by describing its several amiable and

excellent fruits. fruits are mentioned: suffering long, which has respect to the evil or injury received from others; and being kind, which has respect to the good to be done to others. Dwelling, for the present, on the first of these points, I would endeavor to show,

In the text two of these

THAT CHARITY, OR A TRULY CHRISTIAN SPIRIT,

WILL DISPOSE US MEEKLY TO BEAR THE EVIL THAT IS RECEIVED FROM OTHERS, OR THE INJURIES THAT OTHERS MAY DO TO US.

Meekness is a great part of the Christian spirit. Christ, in that earnest and touching call and invitation of his that we have in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, in which he invites all that labor and are heavy-laden to come to himself for rest, particularly mentions, that he would have them come, to learn of him; for he adds, "I am meek and lowly of heart." And meekness, as it respects injuries received from men, is called long-suffering in the Scriptures, and is often mentioned as an exercise, or fruit of the Christian spirit (Galatians, v. 22): "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering;" and (Ephesians iv. 1, 2): "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk.