fundamental mistake. The doctrines are the principles which must excite and animate the performance: They are the points from which the lines of conduct flow; and as lines may be supposed to be formed by the progress of their points, or to be drawn out of their substance, so the line of Christian conduct is only formed by the progressive action of Christian principle, or is drawn out of its substance.

The doctrines of revelation form a great spiritual mould, fitted by Divine wisdom for impressing the stamp of the Christian character on the minds that receive them. I shall here mention some of the leading features of that character, as connected with the corresponding doctrines.

The love of God is the radical principle of the Christian character; and to implant this principle, is the grand object and the distinct tendency of the Christian doctrines. And it may be proper here to repeat an observation which has been already much insisted on,that this love is not a vague affection for an ill-defined object, but a sentiment of approbation and attachment to a distinctly-defined character. The Bible calls us to the exercise of this affection, by setting before us a history of the unspeakable mercy of God towards man. At first sight, it might seem impossible to conceive any way in which the mercy of God could be very strikingly or affectingly manifested towards his creatures. His omnipotence and unbounded sovereignty make every imaginable gift cheap and easy to him. The par

don of the sins committed by such feeble worms, seems no great stretch of compassion in so great and so unassailable a monarch. God knew the heart of man. He knew that such would be his reasonings; and he prepared a work of mercy, which might in all points meet these conceptions. God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son for its salvation. His was not the benevolence which gives an unmissed mite out of a boundless store,-it was a self-sacrificing benevolence, which is but meagerly shadowed forth by any earthly comparison. We admire Codrus sacrificing his life for his country; we admire the guide plunging into the quicksand to warn and save his companions; we admire the father suffering the sentence of his own law, in the stead of his son; we admire Regulus submitting to voluntary torture for the glory of Rome: But the goodness of God, in becoming man, and suffering, the just for the unjust, that he might demonstrate to them the evil of sin,-that he might attract their affections to his own character, and thus induce them to follow him in the way of happiness,—was a goodness as much superior to any human goodness, as God is above man, or as the eternal happiness of the soul is above this fleeting existence; and, if believed, must excite a proportionate degree of admiration and gratitude.

The active and cordial love of our fellow creatures is the second Christian duty. And can this sentiment be more powerfully impressed upon us, than by the fact, that Christ's

blood was shed for them as well as for ourselves; and by the consideration that this blood reproaches us with the basest ingratitude, when we feel or act maliciously, or even slightingly, towards those in whom our heavenly benefactor took so deep an interest? Under the sense

of our Lord's continual presence, we shall endeavour to promote even their temporal welfare; but, above all, we shall be earnest for the good of their souls, which he died to redeem.

Christians are commanded to mortify the earthly and selfish passions of ambition and avarice and sensuality. Our Lord died that he might redeem us from such base thraldom, and allure us to the pure liberty of the sons of God. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, were in fact his murderers. If we love him, we must hate them: If we love our own peace, we must hate them; for they separate the soul fr the Prince of Peace. The happiness eternity consists in a conformity to the God or holiness; and shall we spend our few days in confirming ourselves in habits directly opposed to him ?-No; rather let us begin heaven below, by beginning to be holy.

The gospel exhorts us to humility; and deep humility, indeed, must be the result of a true acquiescence in the judgment which God passed upon us when he condemned his Son as the representative of our race. And when we think of what our Almighty Father hath done for us, our hearts must often convict us of the

strange contrast which is exhibited betwixt our dealings with him and his dealings with us.

We are commanded to be diligent in the duties of life, and to be patient under its sufferings. And, to enforce this precept, we are instructed that the minutest event of life is ordered by him who loved us and gave himself for us; and that all these events, how trifling or how calamitous soever they may appear, are yet necessary parts of a great plan of spiritual education, by which he trains his people to his own likeness, and fits them for their heavenly inheritance. He walked himself by the same road; only it was rougher; and he hath shown us by his example that the cross is a step to glory.

The Scriptures teach that the sentence of death falls upon all mankind, in consequence of the transgression of the first individual; and that eternal life is bestowed on account of the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. The grand moral purpose for which this doctrine is introduced, is to impress upon our minds a sense of the punishment due to transgression-of the exceeding opposition which subsists between sin and happiness, and of the exceeding harmony which subsists between perfect holiness and eternal glory. The death of a single individual could give no adequate manifestation of the pernicious nature of sin. Death appears sometimes rather as a blessing than an evil; and in general no moral lesson is received from it, except the vanity of earthly things. But when a single offence is presented to us, and

there is appended to it the extinction of a whole race as its legitimate consequence, we cannot evade the conviction of its inherent malignity. As the value of this lesson, if really received, infinitely overbalances in the accounts of eternity the loss of this brief mode of our existence, there can be no just ground of complaint against the great Disposer of all things.

In the same way, the hope of eternal life through the obedience of Christ, suggests to us the idea of the strong love and approbation which God feels for moral perfection, and the indissoluble connexion in the nature of things between happiness and holiness.

The divine government in this respect is just a vivid expression of the great moral attribute of God, "That he loveth righteousness and hatheth iniquity." A simple pardon, bestowed without any accompanying circumstances, must have drawn some degree of gratitude from the criminal, if he knew his danger; and this would have been all: But when he views the perfect and holy obedience of a great benefactor as the ground of his pardon, he is induced to look with love and admiration towards that obedience which gained the Divine favour, as well as towards the friend who paid it. A feeling of humble and affectionate dependence on the Saviour, a dread and hatred of sin, and a desire after holiness, are the natural fruits of the belief of this doctrine.

That plan of the Divine government by which God deals with men through a representative, occupies an important place in re