ble; the highest happiness angels and archangels can enjoy; the highest God himself can give; for what higher can even He bestow, than to make you like Himself in what his own blessedness most consists in, a partaker of his own holiness, and thus of his own happiness, for eternity.

3. It will quicken your love, and your longings for heaven. The more frequently you gaze on the beauty of holiness, as it shines in the character of Jesus Christ, the more deeply will you become enamoured of its divine attractions; and the more ardently you desire, and the more earnestly you strive after the attainment of a perfect likeness to Him you love, the more painfully will you feel how little of this likeness, compared to what you long for, you can attain on earth, while encompassed with corruption, and weighed down by this body of sin and death. Yea, the closer by assimilation you approach the Redeemer's character, the more clearly will you see in its pure light your own defilements; the nearer view you thus enjoy of His perfection, the more will you learn and lament your own imperfections; and feel and confess, when most like, how very unlike you still are to your Divine Master and Model! and how will this inflame your love, and quicken your desires after a world where the picture, of which little more than the outline has been here sketched, will be filled up and finished, in all the fulness of Christ's character, and all the

brilliancy of heaven's colouring; and with your most ardent longings, your loftiest ambition, so to speak, fully and everlastingly satisfied, you shall stand forth to the glory of God's grace-a fair and finished likeness of your Divine Redeemer, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, unblameable in holiness; yea, faultless even in His presence, "who chargeth His angels with folly, and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean."

SERMON VII.

THE LOVE OF CHRIST A CONSTRAINING PRINCIPLE.

2d CORINTHIANS, v. part of 14th verse.

« The love of Christ constraineth us.”

It has not unfrequently been objected that the doctrines of free grace are unfriendly to vital godliness, and that to teach men that they are to be justified in the sight of God, not in any the least degree by their own merits, but exclusively by the Redeemer's, is to break down the barriers of Christian morality, and open wide the flood-gates of licentiousness! for that if men are once persuaded that it is not their own righteousness, but the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is to procure for them acceptance with Jehovah, they will of course consider themselves at liberty to follow the dictates of their own desires,

whithersoever they may lead, as they have been told that their own obedience to the commands of God cannot purchase for them the kingdom of heaven! Now, the first inquiry that naturally suggests itself, in considering this subject, is, what influence these doctrines exercise over the lives of those who maintain them-whether they exhibit what is supposed by some to be their natural, and almost inevitable consequences in the superior immorality of the lives of their advocates. And here it cannot surely but excite the unfeigned surprise of every unprejudiced mind to observe that a directly contrary tendency is manifested in the strenuous upholders of the doctrines of free grace, and that, generally speaking, they are as much distinguished

their peculiar devotedness to the service of God, and the pursuit of holiness, as by the peculiar doctrines of their creed-so that, by a contradiction that would be amusing were not the subject so serious, their doctrines are condemned as being too loose, and their lives as being too strict! This is certainly a strange phenomenon-for if a man profess a creed, whose object, or at least its tendency, is to set him free from the obligations of morality, and enable him to reconcile the hope of heaven with an unholy life, we would have every right to expect to see this design manifested in the tenor of his conduct-and that he would be the first to enjoy, in his own person, the licence supposed to

be allowed him by his creed; and if, instead of this, we find the individual professing this suspected creed actually striving after higher degrees of holiness, practising stricter self-denial, and exhibiting more unreserved consecration of heart and life to God, than those who oppose his doctrines even think necessary-yea, perhaps ridicule and censure as enthusiastic and extravagant, we are surely compelled in all fairness to conclude, either that we have entirely mistaken his sentiments, or that there is some secret principle unknown to us, mixed up with them, of such a nature as to counteract the mischievous tendencies which we apprehend, and render the doctrines, which to us appear fraught with danger, not merely harmless, but directly instrumental in promoting the glory of God, and the cause of godliness. Now, my friends, I do not hesitate to declare that just in proportion as any individual feels and confesses himself to be a miserable ruined sinner, who, if saved at all, must be saved from first to last by the free unmerited grace of a forgiving God; just in proportion as he renounces, honestly and heartily renounces, all dependence on his own obedience or sufferings, and trusts simply and exclusively for pardon and salvation in the alone meritorious sufferings and obedience of a crucified Redeemer, who is "the Lord our Righteousness," there is in the Christian scheme a principle, (beautifully harmonising with the consti