some doctrinal difficulty which shortens you and binds you up from putting forth an instant activity in this matter, I would cut it through, and tear it asunder as a spell of infatuation. Ah! my brethren, it is not enough that you be told how there must be an entire separation from idols ere you reach that place where nothing unclean and unholy ever enters. The hour of your departure from this world looks a distant futurity, and you put it far away from you; but I tell you that on this hour you must begin the work of separation; and knowing that delay is ruin, and how artful are the pleadings of the soul for a little more sleep and a little more slumber, I ply your consciences with the energy of an immediate call, and lift in your present hearing the solemn announcement-that now, even now, you must come out from amongst them.

SERMON XIX.

[PREACHED in the Tron Church at the first Sacrament dispensed by Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, 5th November, 1815.]

II. CORINTHIANS VI. 17, 18.

Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

THE sinner who turns with his whole heart and whole soul to God comes to be separate from all idols. This is the object of his unceasing attempts and aspirations-this is the purpose by which he is actuated. The commencement of this purpose is marked by his coming from the service of idolatry, and at this time he comes out from among them. The continuance of this purpose is marked by his keeping from the service of the idolatry, and then it is that he refrains his hand from touching the unclean thing. He has come out from among them, and he will not go back again; and lest he should be allured, he refrains from the most distant approaches that may tempt his return. He will not even venture upon the borders of temptation-he will not even so much as touch the unclean thing. He dreads the power of seduction that lies even in the very outworks of idolatry, and he keeps studiously aloof from them. If temptation meet him whether he will or not, he must grapple with it; but if he has a choice in the matter he would rather fly from it. This is the safe and the scriptural way of managing every temptation-when it is in your power, keep

without its reach. If your seducing companions have still a power of seduction over you, shun, if possible, their presence. If a luxurious entertainment has still a power of oversetting your purposes of control, save yourself by a timely withdrawment, or keep altogether away from it. If an alluring object present itself before you, turn away your eyes from viewing vanity. Your safety lies in caution. It will be long, and very long, my refraining friends, ere you should let down that vigilance which distrust and conscious weakness ought to inspire. You have come out from among the idolatries of your former days, have you?—well, you will find the work of keeping out from them a work of great watchfulness. You will need to have all your eyes about you, for you are surrounded with images of deceit which would light up your old affections, and bear you back again into the old service. Oh! it is wise to be suspicious of yourself and fearful of your own firmness. Go not wilfully to commit a vessel so frail to the rude shock of contending temptations, and keep your presence from the service of idolatry, and from all that would seduce you to the service.

But to touch not the unclean thing is not a mere act and exercise of the body-it is a precept that may be addressed to the mind, and to the management of its thoughts and affections. Remove your mind from the contact of every unlawful object that would steal upon its desires and tempt it to purposes of sin. Should an unhallowed thought offer to intrude itself, and kindle up any wayward affections, rebuke it from the inner chamber of the soul. Should the temptings of an unfair speculation kindle up any desires of covetousness, spurn it away from you. Should some gay and earthly vision of futurity offer to mislead your fancy, and bind it in captive attachment to the world you had abandoned, let the great and commanding realities of an eternal inheritance chase the hollow deceitfulness from your bosom. Keep your heart with all diligence. It is not safe to let it linger on the mountains of vanity. It is not right to commit it to the hazard which it is in your power to fly from, or wantonly expose it to the temptations which you

are commanded to pray against. Its tendencies are too much away from God, and too much directed to the creature, to be lightly tampered with; and it is only when you renounce the idolatries of the creature, and keep yourself separate from it, and harbour not the temptations which would draw you back to it, that God will receive you.

Before I proceed to the next clause, let me advert to one mischievous effect which the wordy and lengthened illustrations of a preacher may give rise to. He takes up one or two verses of the Bible, and he breaks them down into separate pieces, and he bestows his several paragraphs upon each of them, and he leads his hearers to look upon each as furnishing a distinct topic of remark and contemplation, when, in fact, the whole impression of the whole verse should be all in his mind together, and should give a force and a direction to every one of its clauses. As to the two verses which I have now submitted to you, by one breath of utterance I can pour the whole of it into the ear of a hearer-by one glance of the eye it can be all taken up into the mind of a reader-in a single moment its entire meaning may have taken possession of the heart, so that with the act of obedience to the first clause, "Come out from among them," there may exist at the same time an earnest desire after the fulfilment of the second clause, "Be ye separate," and a firm purpose of carrying the third clause into execution, "Touch not the unclean thing;" and the joyful encouragement which lies in the fourth clause, "I will receive you," giving movement to the very first steps of obedience, and cheering you through all its successive stages; and the blessed assurance of the last clause, "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty," telling upon you at the very outset of your new career, and beginning to obtain the earnest of its full and farther accomplishment with your very first attempts to seek God, if haply you might find Him-for He sees you afar off, even as the father saw his prodigal son, and He hears the very earliest of your cries after Him, and the prayer of "Turn me, and I shall be turned," lifted up from the very depths of enslavement, is not

disregarded by Him; and it is strength from Him put into you that gives you the power of coming out from idols, and kept up in you that gives you power of maintaining a continual separation from idols, and dealt out to you in every hour of need and of temptation that gives you the power of resisting, and fleeing, and touching not what is unclean; and thus with the promises in your eye at the very outset, you have also at the very outset a beginning experience of their accomplishment, and God, receiving you into friendship, hands out to you larger and larger supplies of strength for progressive obedience, and holding Himself out as an offered Father-which He does at this moment to one and to all of you-He follows up your very first answer to His call, Come out from among them, with larger and larger supplies of the spirit of adoption-you grow in the joyful confidence of being His sons and daughters as you grow in other things-the promise of being a Father to you, tells upon your faith at the very first utterance of the exhortation; and as you come on in the exercise of filial obedience and filial affection, the alliance between you and God is begun with the very first act of turning to Him, and the very first expression you give of so turning by some act of obedience-as you persevere the alliance is cultivated and made closer-and thus it is that the fellowship between God and His strayed children is begun and carried forward in time, and will at length receive its blissful consummation in eternity.

Now, mark the effect which may sometimes arise from a separate dissertation being constructed on every separate clause and in the order of their following. There are successive portions of time taken up in the act of attending upon the tardiness of a human illustration, and we are apt to think that in the practice the several topics must be proceeded upon in the same order, and one of them must be mastered ere we try the obedience or take the comfort of the rest. We must first come out, and then keep out, and then refrain our hand from the most distant approaches of temptation, and then, and not till then, God will receive us and be a Father to us. Now, my brethren, this is not the way of it. You read the whole of the