such the blessed effects of Christian love, are you not now prepared to feel and to acknowledge the truth of our Lord's declaration, that it is a "new commandment?" new, not only as explained in the Gospel with new clearness, enforced by new motives, and illustrated by a new example, but new in its power and efficacy. For what, (I ask, in the words of a contemporary Divine',) has been the efficacy of other motives? The world has heard, for ages, of the beauty of virtue, and the deformity of vice. The hopes and the fears of mankind have been appealed to by promises of rewards, and threatenings of punishment in eternity. And what has been the result? Men have lived, for the greater part, just as they would have lived, if these things had never been heard of. Here and there, indeed, an exterior appearance of virtue has been produced, even a form of godliness has been put on, and man has become superstitious and wretched. But has the heart been touched? Have the sins of the heart been restrained? Has passion been subdued? Has pride been rooted out? Has selfishness been overcome? Has a single human being been prevailed on, by these motives, to live no longer unto himself, but unto God? Not one. It is the love

John xiii. 34.

* Rev. C. Bradley, in an admirable Discourse on the constraining influence of the Love of Christ.-Sermons, vol. i. 341, 2.

of Christ only which can effect such a work, and win such a triumph as this. It is the love of Christ only which can reach the heart of a man, root out its sins, and give its affections to God. Our duty, then, is plain: It is to get this love of Christ shed abroad in our hearts, and, when we have received this gift, to seek that it may be preserved to us and increased: It is so to contemplate the riches of the Saviour's grace, His life of suffering and His death of anguish, that it may be poured out on our hearts. The gift of which we speak will enable us to face any difficulties, to weather any storms, and to endure any sufferings, so that our God may be honoured, and the name of our Saviour praised. It will overcome iniquity and lusts within us; it will render even self-denial easy; it will lay the only sure and lasting foundation of happiness, by making our duty our delight; and it will continually animate us with that love to our neighbour, which is, of a truth, the “ fulfilling of the law."

66

Occupied as we usually are, my Brethren, with the cares and the business of life, and intent as we usually are upon our own immediate interests and pursuits, we think but seldom, and, when we do think, we think but slightly, of that flood of wickedness which is continually overspreading this fallen world. But, on occasions like the present, when we are brought, as it were, into immediate contact

10

with the black and appalling catalogue of humani crimes; when we are thus solemnly reminded how many there are who, living in a Christian land, are. yet" filled with all unrighteousness," "maliciousness," and "wickedness"," and how this depravity of the human heart has betrayed some into all the intricate mazes of secret fraud, and hurried others into all the excesses of the most daring outrage: on such occasions, I say, surely there cannot be an individual present, who does not perceive and deplore the malignant nature of that moral disease which, when left to operate without control, is followed by such wide-wasting and destructive ravages. among the children of men!

I would now appeal, therefore, to all around me, and would say; as you value the health of your: own souls, as you value that of the souls of others, let not such feelings have been awakened this evening in vain! Let the fearful proofs which are now before you of the desperate wickedness of the unregenerate heart, when unchecked in its downward course, weigh with yourselves, and with all whom Providence has committed to your charge, to im press upon you and upon them the necessity and the value of that atonement which God has in mercy provided for a sinful world! And while you learn to tremble at that "wrath of God" which is

⚫ Rom. i. 29.

t Rom. i. 18.

"revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men "," resolve never to be ashamed of that Gospel of Christ, "which is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth *." It is, I repeat, the " power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth;" for, as you there read, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And although we know, therefore, that "death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned," yet we know also, that "Christ died for all," and that the voice of His Gospel still is to every sinner, as it ever has been and ever will be. till the end of time, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light"."

Again, then, I say to all who hear me: Let not the feelings which this occasion may awaken, be awakened in vain, but go forth from hence deeply impressed, on the one hand, with a conviction of the depravity of our fallen nature, and, on the other, with a sense of the surpassing love of Him who "gave Himself for us," and desiring, therefore, under the constraining influence of that love, to bring all

u Rom. i. 18.

y John iii. 16.

a

Eph. v. 14.

* Rom. i. 16.

* Rom. v. 12.

b Tit. ii. 14.

around you to the" knowledge of the truth." Let this love of Christ be your grand and all-constraining motive, and, assuredly, you will then return, each of you, to the bosom of your respective families, resolving, in the first place, to bring up all such as are immediately committed to your charge "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord d" Under the constraining influence of the same Divine principle, you will then desire to communicate to the poor of your several neighbourhoods the

good tidings of great joy," which the Gospel contains, and to make their children acquainted with the "depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, so that "they may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Nor will you be satisfied with watching only over the tender years of the children of the poor; but, considering yourselves as their guardians and their friends, you will still continue to watch over them in after years, and will do all that lieth in you to direct their steps in the paths of God's commandments.

I have spoken to you, my Brethren, of your homes, and of the neighbourhoods in which you dwell; and I have done so, because I wish to impress it strongly upon you all, that the exercise of

c 1 Tim. ii. 4. • Luke ii. 10.

2 Pet. iii. 18.

Eph. vi. 4.

Rom. xi. 33.