ened by a genuine fervor and enthusiasm. Nothing is more wise or more admirable in action, than to be resolute and yet calm, earnest and yet self-possessed, decided and yet modest; to contend for truth and right with meekness and charity; to go forward in a good cause without pretension, to retire with dignity; to give without pride, and to withhold without meanness; to rejoice with moderation, and to suffer with patience. And nothing, I may add, was more remarkable in the character of our Saviour, than this perfect sobriety, consistency, self-control.

This, therefore, is the perfection of character. This will always be found, I believe, to be a late stage in the progress of religious worth from its first beginnings. It is comparatively easy to be one thing and that alone; to be all zeal, or all reasoning; all faith or all action; all rapture, or all chilling and captious faultfinding. Here novices begin. Thus far they may easily go. Thus far men may go, whose character is the result of temperament and not of culture; of headlong propensity, and not of careful and conscientious discipline. It is easy for the bruised reed to be broken. It is easy for the smoking flax to be quenched. It is easy to deal harshly and rudely with the matters of religious and virtuous experience: to make a hasty effort, to have a paroxysm of emotion, to give way to a feverish and transient feeling, and then to smother and quench all the rising purposes of a better life. But true religion comes to us with a wiser and more considerate adaptation,-to sustain and strengthen the bruised reed of human weakness; to fan the rising flame of virtuous and holy purposes: it comes to revive our failing courage, to restrain our wayward passions.

It will not suffer us to go on with our fluctuations and our fancies; with our transient excitements, and momentary struggles. It will exert a more abiding, a more rational influence. It will make us more faithful and persevering. It will lay its hand on the very energies of our nature, and will take the lead and control, the forming and perfecting of them. May we find its real and gracious power! May it lead us in the true, the brightening path of the just, till it brings us to the perfect day!

Oh! my brethren, we sin against our own peace, we have no mercy upon ourselves, when we neglect such a religion as this. It is the only wisdom, the only soundness, the only consistency and harmony of character, the only peace and blessedness of mind. We should not have our distressing doubts and fears; we should not be so subject as we are to the distracting influences of passion, or of the world without us, if we had yielded our hearts wholly to the spirit and religion of Jesus. It is a religion adapted to us all. To every affection, to every state of mind, troubled or joyous, to every period of life, it would impart the very influence that we need. How surely would it guide our youth, and how would it temper, and soften, and sanctify all the fervors of youthful affection! How well would it support our age, making it youthful again with the fervent hope of immortality! How would it lead us, too, in all the paths of earthly care and business and labour, turning the brief and weary courses of worldly toil into the ways that are everlasting! How faithfully and how calmly would it conduct us to the everlasting abodes! And how well, in fine, does he, of whom it was prophesied that he should not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax; how well does he

V.

THE APPEAL OF RELIGION TO HUMAN NATURE.

UNTO YOU, O MEN, I CALL; AND MY VOICE IS TO THE SONS OF MEN.-Prov. viii. 4.

THE appeal of religion to human nature, the deep wisdom of its instructions to the human heart, the language of power and of cheering with which it is fitted to address the inmost soul of man, is never to be understood, perhaps, till our nature is exalted far beyond its present measure. When the voice of wisdom and purity shall find an inward wisdom and purity to which it can speak, it will be received with a welcome and gladness, with a joy beyond all other joy, such as no tongue of eloquence has ever expressed, nor the heart of worldly sensibility ever yet conceived. It is, therefore, with the most unfeigned diffidence, with the most distinct conciousness that my present labour must be incipient and imperfect, that I enter upon this great theme-the appeal of religion to human nature.

What ought it to be? What has it been? These are the inquiries which I shall pursue. Nor shall I attempt to keep them altogether separate in the discussion; since, both the defects and the duties of religious instruction may often be best exhibited under the same head of discourse. Neither shall I labour to speak of religion under that abstract and figurative character with which wisdom is personified in the context, though that may be occasionally convenient; but whether it be the language of individual reason, or

of the preacher; wheuer it be the language vi or of institutions, I would consider how religion has appealed, and how it ought to have appealed, to human nature.

The topics of discourse, under which I shall pursue these inquiries, are the following; in what character should religion address us? To what in us should it speak? And how should it deliver its message? That is to say, the substance, the subject, and the spirit of the appeal, are the topics of our inquiry. I cannot, of course, pursue these inquiries beyond the point to which the immediate object of my discourse, will carry them; and I am willing to designate that point, at once, by saying, that the questions are, whether the character in which religion is to appeal to us, be moral or not; whether that in us to which it chiefly appeals, should be the noblest or the basest part of our nature; and finally, whether the manner and spirit of its appeal should be that of confidence or distrust, of friendship or hatred.

I. And with regard to the first question, the answer, of course, is, that the character in which religion should address us, is purely moral. As a moral principle, as a principle of rectitude, it must speak to us. Institutions, rites, commands, threatenings, promisesall forms of appeal must contain this essence; they must be moral; they must be holy.

It may be thought strange that I should insist upon a point so obvious, but let me crave your patience. What is the most comprehensive form of morality, holiness, gratitude, religion? It is love; it is goodness. The character of the Supreme Perfection is set forth in this one attribute: "God is love." This is the very glory of God. For when an ancient servant