we have of its character and claims. If we have been taught the spotless and inflexible system of this Divine law, demanding the utmost conceivable devotion to God, and an unerring and unrelaxed obedience of his will, and denouncing the anger of God against every soul of man that doeth evil; when our eyes are opened to behold our own condition as sinners, we shall see ourselves to be wholly guilty in his sight, and our mouths will be stopped from all excuse. There will be found by us, no single feeling or thought, upon the purity of which we can rest the shadow of hope; and no circumstance which we can plead to extenuate a single deficiency. We shall find ourselves to be condemned before God, wholly and everlastingly. And our deep conviction of guilt, will bring us before him with the solemn confession, "I know, that in me, there dwelleth no good thing." But if we have only received, and have been satisfied with, general, partial, and indefinite views of the claims of the law, the same general and indistinct impressions will be transferred to our convictions of personal guilt in our transgressions of it. Our hearts will plead a thousand vain excuses from temptations to which we were exposed, or from the weakness of our nature, or from the inadvertance which surprised us, and we shall never be led to acknowledge ourselves altogether unholy, and justly condemned. We may acknowledge that in many things we have done wrong, but we shall not see that every thing which we have done is wrong; we may confess that many of our acts are evil, but we shall not confess that the secret thoughts of our hearts are also filled with odious and abominable wicked

ness.

We shall still have that self-righteous spirit which springs from an ignorance of the divine law.

2. As our conviction of sin, is thus dependant upon our knowledge of the law, so also is our humility under this conviction. The importance of this temper of mind the Scriptures largely teach us. "The Lord resisteth the proud, but giv

eth grace to the humble." "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word." "Whosoever exalteth himself, shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Humility is not merely a sense of our weakness as creatures; nor a general acknowledgment only of our character as sinners. There is not a human being who would refuse either of these concessions. But it is a real and deep consciousness of our guilty and lost condition, as justly and eternally condemned before God; a clear perception of the total opposition of our hearts to the will of God; and of the entire absence in our lives of the least conformity to his commands. It is such a sense of our wicked alienation from God, of our voluntary rebellion against him; such a conviction that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts, is only evil continually, as makes us really abhor and loathe ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes, before a Being who searcheth our hearts, and will bring every secret thing into judgment, and set our secret sins in the light of his countenance. Such a broken and contrite spirit, the Holy Spirit gives, and God will not despise. But how rarely is such a spirit seen among men. How seldom even among those who profess to be, and who we trust are, truly awakened by the Holy Ghost, do we behold this deep sense of guilt, and this humble acknowledgment of exposure to God's just wrath and indignation. How generally in the world, is there a disposition to think, that such feelings are either wholly pretended, or else absurdly extravagant, even if they are real; and that the expressions of them are fanatical and to be avoided. But why is this?-Are these views a false estimate of the sinner's condition? Is such self-abasement unsuitable to his character and state? Surely not. But such objectors have no knowledge of the divine law. They do not try themselves, or others, by this high and holy standard. They are insensible of their own departures from God; they do not feel

themselves to be lost in sin;-and they can see no cause for such undue humiliation, under a burden, which does not appear to them to be extreme or destructive. The idea of humility, as the Holy Spirit describes it in his word, and forms it in the soul which he creates anew, never enters into the natural mind. The unconverted man cannot comprehend it. He neither possesses it, nor desires it, nor approves of it, according to its real import. It is one of the things which God teach. es man out of his law, and which can be learned under no other discipline than that blessed one, by which he educates the "vessels of his mercy whom he hath afore prepared unto glory." When we have been truly instructed in the nature and extent of this law, and never till then, our convictions of sin, will be deep and definite,—and our self-abasement under them, lowly and abiding; then we shall see, and humbly acknowledge, that we are utterly destitute of all claim to mercy from God, and wholly unworthy of its exercise towards us.

3. The exercise of real gratitude to God, is also dependant upon our accurate knowledge of his law. Gratitude is a thankful consciousness and acknowledgment of the mercies which we have personally received from God. Its exercise must therefore necessarily depend upon the amount, and the nature of the benefits which we believe have been conferred upon us. If we are truly the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, we shall view ourselves in the light of God's revelations of truth. We shall see ourselves to be the cap-. tives of sin and Satan, ransomed from death and hell, by the precious and perfect obedience, and amazing death of our incarnate God. We shall be in our own apprehension, altogether, as "brands plucked out of the burning;" nor can we imagine mercy shewed to any, which would constitute them greater monuments of grace than we are. With such a view of our condition and obligations, our whole soul will bless our Redeemer and Lord, for "the unsearchable riches" of his

grace. We shall call upon all within us, to praise his name. We shall rejoice in God who hath become our salvation, with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But alas! how far are we generally from such gratitude as this! How few are duly sensible of the vast obligations which divine mercy has laid upon them! With the great proportion of professing Christians, some faint and general acknowledgments of divine goodness, are quite sufficient to express their sense of the love which has ransomed them from going down into the pit; and they are disposed to consider stronger language and deeper emotions, than those to which they are accustomed, as excessive, and wanting in sobriety. But how false and how dangerous is such an estimate! How different is it from the mind of beings who surround the throne of God in glory! There, redeemed saints are filled with adoring admiration of the grace which has been displayed in the scheme of man's deliverance; contemplating its transcendant excellency, and praising God, for the glory which he has gained from its accomplishment. There is no coldness or formality there, because they fully discern the evil which has been remedied, and the blessing which has been conferred. And why are men on earth, cold and indifferent, but because they do not see the depths of condemnation, from which they have been rescued, or the labour which their deliverance required,-or the amazing love, which led a divine Saviour to undertake it? Did they behold, in the mirror of God's holy law, the burden and bondage, from which they have been ransomed, and the inestimable worth of the offering which must be made, and which has been made for them, they would surely have far other feelings towards that Glorious Immanuel, who came down into the abyss of their ruin, and put away their punishment, by enduring it himself. A just knowledge and esti mate of the claims of the law which have been fulfilled by him, would lead to a high appreciation of the love which he

has exercised, and the obligations, under which we are placed. But an ignorance of the law, in the very same proportion, reduces our consciousness of the mercy of the law-fulfiller, and our gratitude for the work which he has finished. The measure of our praise to God, is one of the things therefore which he must teach us out of his law.

4. From the same source of instruction, will spring all true zeal for God, and for his service and glory. Thus are our hearts to be taught a thorough and affectionate engagement in his service, as our Redeemer and King. Who is there among the Lord's people, that feels this zeal for God, in any measure correspondent with the standard which the Holy Scriptures have established. There, we are represented, as bought with an inestimable price, and are called upon with intense gratitude for this amazing mercy, to glorify God in our bodies and spirits which are his. With an adequate sense of our obligations to God, the language of our hearts would be, "what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?" No services of ours would appear an adequate return to him. All that we could do for such a Lord, would be as nothing in our eyes. All that we should suffer for him, would be light and gladly borne. Our time, our talents, our property, our influence, our whole life, would appear to be of value in our eyes, only as they could be made humbly subservient to the advancement of the divine glory. The whole world would seem to us, in comparison with the cross of Christ, in the strong expression of Archbishop Leighton, "one grand impertinence." But how little of this spirit do we feel! How little of it, do we see in others! How little is it loved and approved among men, even in the measure in which it is manifested! How infinitely below this "reasonable service," is the standard of the multitude, who still value themselves upon the usefulness and excellence of their lives among men! But this deficiency must also be traced, to the one cause, of which we have already spoken so much. Humility, gratitude, zeal for