more. Now, to such persons, and to such plans, ] themselves deceived, will never persist in their enI say this, that it would not have cost them one deavours to any purpose of actual reformation. tenth of the mortification, pain, and self-denial, to All mankind feel a reluctance to part with their have kept themselves at a distance from sin, that sins. It must be so. It arises from the very nat must and will cost them to break it off; adding ture of temptation, by which they are drawn into the further consideration, that, so long as men sin. Feeling then this strong reluctance, it is preserve their innocence, the consciousness of very natural for men to do what great numbers doing what is right is both the strongest possible do, namely, propose to themselves to part with support of their resolution, and the most constant their sins by degrees; thinking that they can source of satisfaction to their thoughts; but that more easily do it in this way than in any other. when men once begin to give way to vicious in- It presents to their view a kind of compromise; a dulgences, another state of things takes place in temporary hope of enjoying, for the present at their breasts. Disturbance at the heart, struggles least, the criminal pleasures to which they have and defeats, resolutions and relapses, self-reproach addicted themselves, or the criminal advantages and self-condemnation, drive out all quietness and they are making, together with the expectation of tranquillity of conscience. Peace within is at an a final reform. I believe, as I have already said, end. All is unsettled. Did the young and un- that this is a course into which great numbers fall; experienced know the truth of this matter; how and therefore it becomes a question of very great much easier it is to keep innocency than to return importance whether it be a safe and successful to it; how great and terrible is the danger that they course or not. What I am speaking of is the trydo not return to it at all; surely they would see, ing to break off our sins by degrees. Now, in the and see in a light strong enough to influence their first place, it is contrary to principle. A man is determination, that to adhere inviolably to the supposed to feel the guilt and danger of the pracrules of temperance, soberness, and chastity, was tices which he follows. He must be supposed to their safety, their wisdom, their happiness. How perceive this, because he is supposed to resolve to many bitter thoughts does the innocent man avoid? quit them. His resolution is founded upon, springs Serenity and cheerfulness are his portion. Hope from this perception. Wherefore, I say, that it is is continually pouring its balm into his soul. His in contradiction to principle, to allow ourselves heart is at rest, whilst others are goaded and tor- even once more in sin, after we have truly become tured by the stings of a wounded conscience, the sensible of the guilt, the danger, and the conseremonstrances and risings up of principles which quences of it. It is from that time known and they cannot forget; perpetually teased by return-wilful sin. I own I do not see how the plan of ing temptations, perpetually lamenting defeated gradually diminishing a sinful habit can be conresolutions. "There is no peace unto the wicked, sistent with, or can proceed from sincere religious saith my God." There is no comfort in such a principles; for, as to what remains of the habit, it life as this, let a man's outward circumstances be implies an express allowance of ourselves in sin, what they will. Genuine satisfaction of mind is which is utterly inconsistent with sincerity. Whonot attainable under the recurring consciousness ever continues in the practice of any one known of being immersed in a course of sin, and the still sin, in defiance of God's commands, cannot, so remaining prevalence of religious principles. Yet continuing, hope to find mercy: but with respect either this must be the state of a sinner till he re- to so much of the habit as is yet allowed by him cover again his virtuous courses, or it must be a to remain, he is so continuing, and his continustate infinitely worse; that is, it must be a state of ance is part of his plan. These attempts, thereentire surrender of himself to a life of sin, which fore, at gradual reformation, do not proceed from will be followed by a death of despair; by ruin a true vital religious principle; which principle, final and eternal; by the wrath of God; by the succoured by God's grace, is the only thing that pains of hell. can stand against sin, strengthened by habit. So I should reason, upon the case, looking at it in its own nature. The next question is, How is it in fact? Is it in fact better, is it in experience more successful, than from its nature we should expect it to be? Now I am much afraid, that all the proof which can be drawn either from observation or consciousness is against it. Of other men we must judge by observation; of ourselves by consciousness. What happens then to gradual reformation? Perpetual relapses, perpetually defeated and weakened resolutions. The principle of resistance is weakened by every relapse. Did the mortification of a defeat incite and quicken men to stronger efforts, it would be well. But it has a contrary effect; it renders every succeeding exertion more feeble. The checked indulgences, which in the progress of our fancied amendment we allow ourselves, are more than sufficient to feed desire, to keep up the force and strength of temptation; nay, perhaps the temptation acquire more force from the partial curb which we impose upon it. Then, while the temptation remains with unabated, or perhaps augmented strength, our resolution is suffering continual relaxation;

But, secondly, In what manner, and by what methods are sins to be broken off? for although the maxim which we have delivered be perfectly and certainly true, namely, that it is ease and happiness to preserve innocence entirely, compared with what it is to recover our innocence, or even to set bounds to guilt, yet it is a truth which all cannot receive. I do not mean that all will not acknowledge it, for I believe that those will be most ready to give their assent to it, who feel themselves bound and entangled by the chain of their sin. But it is not applicable to every man's case; because many having already fallen into vicious courses, have no longer to consider how much better, how much happier it would have been for them, to have adhered closely to the laws of virtue and religion at first, but how to extricate themselves from the bad condition in which they are placed at present. Now to expect to break off sin in any manner without pain and difficulty, is a vain expectation. It is to expect a moral impossibility. Such expectations ought not to be held out, because they are sure to deceive; and because they who act under such encouragement, finding

our endeavours become unsatisfactory even to our- | Spirit in the work and struggle through which selves. This miserable struggle cannot be maintained long. Although nothing but persevering in it could save us, we do not persevere. Finding not ease, but difficulty increased, and increasing difficulty, men give up the cause; that is, they try to settle themselves into some mode of thinking which may quiet their consciences and their fears. They fall back to their sins: and when they find their consciences easier, they think their guilt less; whereas it is only their conscience that is become more insensible; their reasoning more treacherous and deceitful! The danger is what it was, or greater; the guilt is so too. Would to God we could say, that gradual reforms were frequently | successful; They are what men often attempt; they are, alas! what men usually fail in.

tory answer which can be given to the inquiry; namely, that it is intended for a state of trial and probation. For it appears to me capable of proof, both that no state but one, which contained in it an admixture of good and evil, would be suited to this purpose; and also that our present state, as well in its general plan as in its particular properties, serves this purpose with peculiar propriety.

A state, totally incapable of misery, could not be a state of probation. It would not be a state in which virtue or vice could even be exercised at all -I mean that large class of virtues and vices, which we comprehend under the name of social duties. The existence of these depends upon the existence of misery as well as of happiness in the world, and of different degrees of both; because their very nature and difference consists in promoting or preventing, in augmenting or diminishing, in causing, aggravating, or relieving the wants, sufferings, and distresses of our fellowcreatures. Compassion, charity, humanity, benevolence, and even justice, could have no place in the world, if there were not human conditions to excite them; objects and sufferings upon which they might operate; misery, as well as happiness, which might be affected by them.

meant for a state of probation; because positively it contains that admixture of good and evil which ought to be found in such a state to make it answer its purpose-the production, exercise, and improvement of virtue; and, because negatively, it could not be intended either for a state of absolute happiness, or a state of absolute misery, neither of which it is.

and our tongues with praise. This is easy; this is delightful. None but they who are sunk in sensuality, sottishness, and stupefaction, or whose understandings are dissipated by frivolous pursuits; none but the most giddy and insensible can be destitute of these sentiments. But this is not the trial or the proof. It is in the chambers of sickness; under the stroke of affliction; amidst the pinchings of want, the groans of pain, the pressures of infirmity; in grief, in misfortune; through gloom and horror-that it will be seen whether we hold fast our hope, our confidence, our trust in God; whether this hope and confidence be able to produce in us resignation, acquiescence, and submission. And as those dispositions, which perhaps form the comparative perfection of our moral nature, could not have been exercised in a world of unmixed gratification, so neither would they have found their proper office or object in a state of strict and evident retribution; that is, in which we had no sufferings to submit to, but what were evidently and manifestly the punishment of our sins. A mere submission to punishment, evidently and plainly such, would not have constituted, at least would very imperfectly have constituted the disposition which Nor would, in my opinion, the purposes of trial we speak of, the true resignation of a Christian. be sufficiently provided for, by a state in which It seems, therefore, to be argued, with very happiness and misery regularly followed virtue great probability, from the general economy of and vice; I mean, in which there was no happi-things around us, that our present state was ness, but what was merited by virtue; no misery but what was brought on by vice. Such a state would be a state of retribution, not a state of probation. It may be our state hereafter; it may be a better state; but it is not a state of probation, it is not the state through which it is fitting we should pass before we enter into the other; for when we speak of a state of probation, we speak of a state in which the character may both be put We may now also observe in what manner to the proof, and also its good qualities be confirm- many of the evils of life are adjusted to this partied and strengthened, if not formed and produced, cular end, and how also they are contrived to by having occasions presented in which they may soften and alleviate themselves and one another. be called forth and required. Now, beside that, It will be enough at present, if I can point out the social qualities which have been mentioned how far this is the case in the two instances, which, would be very limited in their exercise, if there of all others, the most nearly and seriously affect was no evil in the world but what was plainly a us-death and disease. The events of life and punishment, (for though we might pity, and even death are so disposed, as to beget, in all reflecting that would be greatly checked, we could not ac- minds, a constant watchfulness. "What I say tually succour or relieve, without disturbing the unto you I say unto all, watch." Hold yourselves execution, or arresting, as it were, the hand of in a constant state of preparation. "Be ready, for justice;) beside this difficulty, there is another you know not when your Lord cometh." Had class of most important duties which would be in there been assigned to our lives a certain age or a great measure excluded. They are the severest, period, to which all, or almost all, were sure of the sublimest, perhaps the most meritorious, of arriving: in the younger part, that is to say, in which we are capable; I mean patience and com- nine tenths of the whole of mankind, there would posure under distress, pain, and affliction; a have been such an absolute security as would steadfast keeping up of our confidence in God, have produced, it is much to be feared, the utmost and our dependence upon his final goodness, even neglect of duty, of religion, of God, of themselves; at the time that every thing present is discourag- whilst the remaining part would have been too ing and adverse; and, what is no less difficult to much overcome with the certainty of their fate, retain, a cordial desire for the happiness and com- would have too much resembled the condition of fort of others, even then, when we are deprived of those who have before their eyes a fixed and apour own. I say, that the possession of this tem- pointed day of execution. The same consequence per is almost the perfection of our nature. But it would have ensued if death had followed any is then only possessed, when it is put to the trial: known rule whatever. It would have produced tried at all, it could not have been in a life made security in one part of the species, and despair in up only of pleasure and gratification. Few things another. The first would have been in the highare easier than to perceive, to feel, to acknowledge, est degree dangerous to the character; the second, to extol the goodness of God, the bounty of Pro- insupportable to the spirits. The same observavidence, the beauties of nature, when all things tion we are entitled to repeat concerning the two go well; when our health, our spirits, our circum-cases-of sudden death, and of death brought op stances, conspire to fill our hearts with gladness, by long disease. If sudden deaths never occurred,

those who found themselves free from disease would be in perfect safety; they would regard themselves as out of the reach of danger. With all apprehensions they would lose all seriousness and all restraint: and those persons who the most want to be checked and to be awakened to a sense of the consequences of virtue and vice, the strong, the healthy, and the active, would be without the greatest of all checks, that which arises from the constant liability of being called to judgment. If there were no sudden deaths, the most awful warning which mortals can receive would be lost: That consideration which carries the mind the most forcibly to religion, which convinces us that it is indeed our proper concern, namely, the precariousness of our present condition, would be done away. On the other hand, if sudden deaths were too frequent, human life might become too perilous: there would not be stability and dependence either upon our own lives or the lives of those with whom we were connected, sufficient to carry on the regular offices of human society. In this respect, therefore, we see much wisdom. Supposing death to be appointed as the mode (and some mode there must be) of passing from one state of existence to another, the manner in which it is made to happen, conduces to the purposes of warning and admonition, without overthrowing the conduct of human affairs.

Many virtues are not only proved but produced by trials: they have properly no existence without them. "We glory," saith St. Paul, "in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope."

In

But of sickness we may likewise remark, how wonderfully it reconciles us to the thoughts, the expectation, and the approach of death; and how this becomes, in the hand of Providence, an example of one evil being made to correct another. Without question, the difference is wide between the sensations of a person who is condemned to die by violence, and of one who is brought gradually to his end by the progress of disease; and this difference sickness produces. To the Christian whose mind is not harrowed up by the memory of unrepented guilt, the calm and gentle approach of his dissolution has nothing in it terrible. that sacred custody in which they that sleep in Christ will be preserved, he sees a rest from pain and weariness, from trouble and distress: Gradually withdrawn from the cares and interests of the world; more and more weaned from the pleasures of the body, and feeling the weight and pressure of its infirmities, he may be brought almost to desire with St. Paul to be no longer absent from Christ; knowing, as he did, and as he assures us, that "if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

SERMON XXXIV.

STATE.

Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Col. i. 28.

Of sickness, the moral and religious use will be acknowledged, and, in fact, is acknowledged, by all who have experienced it; and they who have not experienced it, own it to be a fit state for the meditations, the offices of religion. The fault, I fear, is, that we refer ourselves too much to that state. We think of these things too little in health, because we shall necessarily have to think of them when we come to die. This is a great THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER IN A FUTURE fault; but then it confesses, what is undoubtedly true, that the sick-bed and the death-bed shall inevitably force these reflections upon us. In that it is right, though it be wrong in waiting till the season of actual virtue and actual reformation be past, and when, consequently, the sick-bed and the death-bed can bring nothing but uncertainty, horror, and despair. But my present subject leads me to consider sickness, not so much as a preparation for death as the trial of our virtues; of virtues the most severe, the most arduous, perhaps the best pleasing to Almighty God; namely, trust and confidence in him under circumstances of discouragement and perplexity. To lift up the feeble hands and the languid eye; to draw and turn with holy hope to our Creator, when every comfort forsakes us, and every help fails; to feel and find in him, in his mercies, his promises, in the works of his providence, and still more in his word, and in the revelation of his designs by Jesus Christ, such rest and consolation to the soul as to stifle our complaints and pacify our murmurs; to beget in our hearts tranquillity and confidence in the place of terror and consternation, and this with simplicity and sincerity, without having, or wish ing to have, one human witness to observe or know it,—is such a test and trial of faith and hope, of patience and devotion, as cannot fail of being in a very high degree well-pleasing to the Author of our natures, the guardian, the inspector, and the rewarder of our virtues. It is true in this instance, as it is true in all, that whatever tries our virtue strengthens and improves it. Virtue comes out of the fire purer and brighter than it went into it.

THESE words have a primary and a secondary use. In their first and most obvious view, they express the extreme earnestness and anxiety with which the apostle Paul sought the salvation of his converts. To bring men to Jesus Christ, and, when brought, to turn and save them from their sins, and to keep them steadfast unto the end in the faith and obedience to which they were called, was the whole work of the great apostle's ministry, the desire of his heart, and the labour of his life: it was that in which he spent all his time and all his thought; for the sake of which he travelle from country to country, warning every man, as he speaks in the text, and exhorting every man, enduring every hardship and every injury, ready at all times to sacrifice his life, and at last actually sacrificing it, in order to accomplish the great pur. pose of his mission, that he might at the last day present his beloved converts perfect in Christ Jesus. This is the direct scope of the text. But it is not for this that I have made choice of it. The last clause of the verse contains within it, indirectly and by implication, a doctrine certainly of great personal importance, and, I trust, also of great comfort to every man who hears me. The clause is this, "That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:" by which I understand St. Paul