them to purity and peace. Will we not, therefore, urge them to the utmost possible extent? Will we not enter their abodes with words of pursuasive love upon our lips, unfolding to their view the transcendent glories of Christ, and pleading with them in his stead to be reconciled to God? Will we not make the art of Christian influence and pursuasion, a subject of earnest study, that we may turn its full force in favor of truth and salvation?

How interesting, how solemn the thought, that God should take our feeble influence into connexion with his own word and Spirit, to make out a new and unique power, to act upon this world for its recovery to holiness and bliss? What wonders were wrought, during a period of four thousand years, to supply the revealed element in this mighty efficiency! What agony and blood did it cost the adorable Son of God, to procure the gift of the Spirit! And when that Spirit wrought in our conversion, did he not kindle in us the evangelizing fire? Did not the worth of souls, the glory of Christ, the judgment seat in prospect, with the ensuing bliss of an endless heaven, or misery of an endless hell, extort from us the earnest prayer, Lord, what can I do to pull sinners out of the flames of impending wrath? Yea, did not every principle begotten in us by the Holy Spirit, act with

impulsive force, stirring us up to do something in the great enterprise of Christian benevolence ? And shall we wantonly put out the lights of divine truth, through our neglect or our heresies? Shall we grieve, quench and resist the Holy Ghost? Shall we hide the heavenly light under a bushel?

Shall we, on whom hangs the last hope of a suffering race, throw away our energies on inferior objects, and thus withhold the bread of life from millions who are ready to perish?

Both the Christianity of the Bible, and that which has been wrought into our hearts, so far as we have any, invariably tends towards the salvation of perishing men. The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead. Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. The great question is, What will give to our efforts of Christian persuasion the greatest efficiency? We occupy a most responsible situation. We are like men on the firm coast, opposite to which a broken wreck, covered with living multitudes, lies dashing in the foaming surf. It is no time to theorize but to act. Each is bound by all the ties of humanity, to do his utmost to rescue the ship-wrecked multitude from a watery grave. And if he recognize among them his own kindred and friends, or if he have himself just escap

ed from their perilous condition, what additional strength would the appeal to his sympathies acquire!

This is our condition. Millions on millions of souls are exposed to the eternal damnation of hell! Each succeeding wave of time bears off some beyond the reach of our prayers, tears and labors. Not a moment is to be wasted. Every thing tender in Christian sympathy, and fervent in holy love, calls upon us in tones of thunder, What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

CHAPTER III.

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE SAVING EFFICIENCY AND THE FORCES OF NATURE.

We have seen that the power which is directly active in saving men from their sins, unites three several elements, no one of which is ever exerted independently of the others. The Spirit no more saves without the word and the church, than the church can save without the word and the Spirit. Perhaps he cannot do it, consistently with the laws of mind and accountable agency. But of this it is unnecessary that we should speak.

It is alike unnecessary, also, to vex ourselves with the question, whether the Spirit acts solely through the medium of motive in the view of the mind, or whether he exerts an influence adscititious to motive. As long as the word and the church, as well as the Spirit, sustain such a given relation to a conversion, whenever it takes place, it is not worth while to trouble ourselves about the nature of that relation in the case of each, since to all practical purposes, it is the same

whether it be one way or the other. Let me give an illustration, to show the utter folly and irrelevancy of spending so much time, to settle the claims of the motive or the anti-motive system; one of the devil's contrivances for diverting the energies of Christians from the destruction of his own kingdom of darkness to a war among themselves.

Suppose A is a point from which an influence emanates to affect the moral decisions of B; and suppose C is another point from which a similar influence reaches B; and yet that the latter is never exerted but in connexion with the former; I ask whether A's influence would not be just as necessary, as if it depended upon that alone? Here we have it; C

Now, we will suppose that A stands for the word, as contained in the Bible and presented by Christians, or that it represents motives in the view of the understanding; and C is an influence from the Holy Spirit which is wholly distinct from such motives, although it assimilates with them, runs into them, and is never exerted without them. In that case would the accompanying influence of the Spirit supersede the necessity of the word, or be itself superseded? Would not the fact of His never going where Christians had not pre