open our souls to their energy, and promote, by every honourable method, their spread and establishment among mankind, should be our ambition. Zeal is an elevated and an useful passion. It is forcibly and repeatedly enjoined in the sacred writing. It forms the leading trait of excellence in the best and most enlightened characters. Indeed, an individual can scarcely be pronounced truly good, except he possesses a portion of this celestial fire. But let us be careful that our warmth be temperate and regular. Zeal, confined within the limits prescribed by reason and scripture, is attended with blessed consequences. Loosened from these restraints, like the devouring conflagration, it involves in one undistinguishable ruin the victims of its fury, and triumphs in the desolation it has effected. How, different is the Christian, influenced by a zeal purely evangelical, from the monster who is either swoln with the venom of uncharitableness, or is pregnant with persecution for conscience sake! "Mistake me not (says good Richard Baxter) I do not slight orthodoxy, nor jeer at the name; but only disclose the pretences of devilish zeal in pious or seemingly pious men. The slanders of some of these, and the bitter opprobrious speeches of others, have more effectually done the Devil's service, under the name of orthodoxy and zeal for truth,

of

than the malignant scorners of godliness." Thus also the pious Matthew Henry declares, that all the Christian graces, ZEAL is most apt to turn sour! And Dr. Doddridge, in his Family Expositor, has this remark :---" Wisely did Christ silence the suspicious praises of an unclean spirit; and vain is all the hope which men build merely on those orthodox professions of the most important truths, in which Satan himself could vie with them." May these observations be remembered by zealots of every description!

Indeed, the light and darkness now blended together, instead of generating a spirit of scepticism, or precipitating us into acts of violence, should impel us to look for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. What ye know not now, ye shall know hereafter-was our Saviour's declaration to his disciples, respecting an event which occurred whilst he continued to sojourn amongst them. It is, therefore, reasonable to believe that we shall not remain ignorant of matters of superior importance, when the proper period of communicating higher degrees of information arrives. We may, however, be assured, that the Spirit of God guides all good men into necessary truth. This is a sentiment in which the wisest of mankind concur; and upon which learned divines, after their most penetrative researches,

are obliged ultimately to rest. A venerable and distinguished Christian father pronounced the greatest heresy to be, a wicked life. Devoutly is it wished that those who are clamorous about speculative tencts, would level their artillery more against the violation of the preceptive part of our religion.

The cloquent Saurin pointedly exclaims--"Why are not ecclesiastical bodies as rigid and severe against heresies of practice as they are against heresies of speculation? Certainly there' are beresies in morality as well as in theology. Councils and synods reduce the doctrines of faith to certain propositional points, and thunder anathemas against all who refuse to subscribe them. They say, cursed be he who doth not believe the divinity of Christ; cursed be he who doth not believe hypostatical union, and the mystery of the cross; cursed be he who denies the inward operations of grace, and the irresistible efficacy

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kind. To the word of God, therefore, let us have constant recourse, and thence derive the doctrine which is according to godliness, pure as the light of heaven and refreshing as the dew of the morning! The Gospel of Jesus Christ, just y understood and cordially believed, enlightene the mind, calms the troubled conscience, BEL tifies depraved propensities, and introduce us into the habitation of the sperits of just men made perfect.

But, alas! mankind. instead of ascertaining what is truth, and how it can best exert its influence over the several departments of conducty are occupied in schemes of interested ambition, or sunk into criminal indifference. Upon devia they seldom bestow a serious thougin. Luong. awful in its nature, frequent in its recursos, and alarming in its consequences, it dev their minds no impression.

Without aga

they behold their fellow-creatures off the busy theatre of action, a after another, either by disease o the house appointed for all living' cease indeed of relatives and fu

a sigh, "tter

b

exclamati

selres M

RECAPITULATORY TABLE.

I.

II.

III.