Gospel alone, nor those who would confine it to the exposition and enforcement of moral duty. Throughout these discourses, the fullest exhibition of Christian doctrine is attended with the deepest and most heart-searching application to practice; so much so indeed, that we have heard an apprehension expressed lest the standard of Christian perfection should appear to be raised so high as to occasion despair. But if this is an error, it is an error which Mr. Wilson shares in common with the Bible.

In our wish to communicate some idea of the nature of these discourses, we shall not attempt the unsatisfactory task of analyzing them individually. The sort of criticism which, it appears to us, may possibly be useful, is an examination of the tone of doctrine pervading them, and of the manner in which it is applied. Of this, in its leading points, we shall endeavour to convey a general notion to our readers.

The subject of primary interest in a Christian sermon is, of course, that doctrine which characterizes and distinguishes Christianity itself. Mr. Wilson naturally makes the mysterious sacrifice of the cross, under various points of view, the subject of several of his first sermons; and we shall lay before our readers his mode of unfolding it, after a few preliminary observations.

In the first place, we must remark, that of all questions this is most exclusively the province of revelation. There are many truths revealed to us in the Bible, which only corroborate the suggestions of our natural reason, and agree with the conclusions at which the most enlightened in all ages have arrived. The being and unity of God; the creation, or to speak more properly, the formation, of the world by a Supreme Contriver at no immense distance of time; the immortality of the human soul; a state of future retribution ;-these, and many other points declared to us in the Scriptures, the speculations of philosophy had either established with some degree of certainty, or at least known to be antecedently probable.

But there are many other points growing out of these, and indeed of still more serious import to man as an individual, on which his own reason can give him no determinate satisfaction; and on which, without the interference of revelation, he must have remained for ever at a loss. One of the most obvious of these, is the light in which God, as a moral governor, beholds the acknowledged transgressions of mankind. If we survey the world, as a whole, we see the infinite majority of its inhabitants in a state of rebellion against their Maker; if we scrutinize our own hearts, we find a strong principle of evil pervading all our moral faculties, and striving for the possession of our souls; how then will God, whom both reason and revelation concur in describing as a Being infinitely holy, and just, and pure,

how will he view this state of things? Will he avenge it? Will he pardon it? And if he will, on what conditions?

It must be owned that those who neglect or disdain the light of revelation, satisfy themselves very easily on these vital questions. The curious language of Lord Herbert is still re-echoed, we imagine, by the careless multitude amongst whom we live, whenever the future, the indefinite future, enters into their thoughts at all.

"No one," says this bold reasoner, can justly hope of an union with the Supreme God, that doth not come as near to him in this life in virtue and goodness as he can, so that if human frailty do interrupt this union by committing faults that make him incapable of his everlasting happiness, it will be fit by a serious repentance to expiate and emaculate those faults, and for the rest, trust to the mercy of God, his Creator, Redeemer, and Preserver, who being our Father, and knowing well in what a weak condition through infirmities we are, will, I doubt not, commiserate those transgressions we commit when they are done without desire to offend his Divine Majesty, and together rectify our understanding through his grace, since we commonly sin through no other cause, but that we mistook a true good for that which was only apparent, and so were deceived in making an undue election in the objects proposed to us: wherein though it will be fit for every man to confess that he hath offended an infinite Majesty and power, yet as, upon better consideration, he finds that he did not mean infinitely to offend, there will be just reason to believe, that God will not inflict an infinite punishment upon him if he be truly penitent." (Life of Lord Herbert, p. 37. Ed. 1770.)

We believe this sort of reasoning, if reasoning it may be called, which takes for granted all the important points in the question, is much more common than men are willing to acknowledge even to themselves. They content themselves with a vague notion of repentance, and of the Divine mercy; but they will not learn at the only source of truth the nature of the one, or the conditions of the other. As our author expresses it," they believe the current notions of the world around them, but they do not credit the truth of God himself."

Yet what can be more inconsistent, than to reject the surer authority proposed to us, and resort by preference to that which at best must be weak and uncertain? to shut our eyes against actual discovery, and trust to the wandering lights of speculation? If testimony cannot be had, let us seek for argument from analogy or reasons of probability, and be thankful for the degree of light which we attain; but doubt and distrust must, to the last, attend the reasonings of man concerning the plans or intentions of an infinite Being; and revelation alone can enable us to decide upon them with that degree of certainty, according to which a reasonable man could be contented to live or die.

Now it must be owned, that when we consult the Scriptures, there is something very awful in the description there given of the natural state of man: of that state, we mean, from which Jesus Christ is said to have delivered his true and faithful followers. It is called a state of darkness: for when our Lord says, "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness; " he implies, that without that light, all was, and is, and will be darkness. When he proceeds to add, "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world; " he implies, that without him the world is lost. So when he declares that God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" it follows, that without him mankind were perishing, and would have perished.

It was also a state in which mankind were lying under Divine wrath and indignation. St. Paul reminds the Ephesian converts, that they had been dead in trespasses and sins, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. "Their deliverer," he adds, "from this state, was Christ, by whose grace they were saved." Lastly, it was a state in which mankind were at enmity with their Maker, and enslaved under the power and dominion of the evil spirit; of him who had first introduced sin into the world, and led the human race into rebellion against their Creator; and who is designated by our Saviour himself as the prince and the god of this world, who had blinded the hearts of the people. To say nothing of the original prophecy, as to the deliverance of mankind from this servitude, or of the allusions to its accomplishment in the Gospel,* St. Paul expressly calls upon the Colossians "to give thanks unto the Father, who had delivered them from the power of darkness, and translated them into the kingdom of his dear Son," and styles his own commission the word and ministry of reconciliation.

If these are the circumstances, and such the natural state of men, it becomes an inquiry of most awful importance to the individual, whether he has so appropriated to himself by faith the covenanted mercy of his heavenly Father, as to have been brought out of darkness into light, from enmity to reconciliation, from a state of condemnation to a state of pardon. Mr. Wilson first points out, from the conversion of the three thousand Jews recorded in the second chapter of the Acts, what this change was under the preaching of the apostles. He then adds, with great truth and judgment:

"Effects of the same kind follow, in our own days, the faithful instructions of the ministers of Christ. The conviction of truth indeed

* See Luke x. 17, and John xii, 31,

is not always so immediate and so powerful; the work of conversion is often slow and imperceptible; and neither the time of its commencement nor the exact steps of its progress can be traced. And it is especially gradual among those who have had the blessing of a religious education, or who have been much accustomed to religious reading and inquiry. Still the commencement of true repentance is substantially the same in all. Men must be convinced of their sins, or perish. And whether this conviction resemble the sudden alarm of the Philippian jailor, and of the Jews in my text, or the gradual illumination of Cornelius, Lydia, the Ethiopian eunuch, and the Bereans, the results are the same. The careless and wicked are effectually brought to feel their sins and their danger, and to inquire after the way of salvation. They are pricked in their hearts with remorse and confusion, their vain excuses are silenced, they feel their lost condition, they humble themselves in contrition of soul before God; and admit without reserve the charge of guilt and condemnation which his holy law prefers against them.

"In many cases, where there has been previously an entirely wicked and ignorant life, truth is more suddenly communicated to the soul, Like the Jews in the text, such men often discover at once, what they never felt before, their extreme danger and misery. The sword of the Spirit lays open their hearts; their mouths are stopped; their sins arise in terrible array before them. They feel for the first time their accounta❤ bleness, their ingratitude to God, the abuse of their talents, the neg. lect of their souls, the wickedness of their hearts and affections. They compare themselves with the spiritual standard of God's law, and con viction of sin breaks in upon their minds with the brightness of a sun, beam. They feel that their former lives have been full of rebellion, vanity, and ungodliness; that their best deeds have been polluted with evil, their merits demerits, their virtues a mask, their religion a form. Thus the arrows of God stick fast in them. Pain, and grief, and per plexity, and alarm, agitate and rend their minds.

"Whether the manner, however, of this conviction of sin be sudden or gradual, the essential point is to feel our transgressions with deep sorrow and compunction of heart. This is the beginning of true re pentance. This forms the broad distinction between a careless, worldly, wicked man, and a lowly and teachable one. Such was the change in Manasseh when he humbled himself before God in the time of his affliction; such was it in Josiah, whose heart was tender ; such in Zaccheus ; such in Mary Magdalen; such in the woman of Samaria; such in the Apostle Paul. In all these cases, there was a poignant grief for their iniquities as committed against God," (P.57–59.)

The necessity and nature of true repentance are more distinctly set forth in the succeeding discourse; but we hasten to the fifth, as more immediately connected with our previous remarks, and treating of the sacrifice which alone renders repentance available, The declaration of the text is very strong; "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of

God hath not life:" 1 John v. 11, 12. After observing, that eternal life is conferred as a gift,—is gratuitously bestowed; that every part of this unspeakable blessing, whether we regard the full fruition of it in heaven, or any of the preparatory steps to it, is spontaneously conferred as by a sovereign who claims to himself the right of doing what he will with his own; the preacher continues to explain the mode in which this eternal life" is laid up, deposited, secured, hidden, sealed in Christ."

"Christ has life in himself, as the word which was with God and was God;' that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.' He has life, also, as the Mediator between God and man; for the life was manifested. As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given also unto the Son to have life in himself. God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. He came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.' We have already seen that our Lord and Saviour has purchased this life, and all that pertains to it, with his own blood; and that he bestows it on 'whomsoever he will.' But he is moreover the source of it in the hearts of Christians by the mysterious presence of his Spirit. They ' are dead, and their life is hid with Christ in God. They live, yet not they, but Christ liveth in them; and the life which they live in the flesh, they live by the faith of the Son of God. He is the bread of life; and he that eateth,' partaketh of, him, even he shall live by him. He is the resurrection and the life. He shall change our vile body, and make it like unto his glorious body; quickening our mortal bodies by his Spirit which dwelleth in us.' And at last, as the Judge of quick and dead, he shall invite us to partake of that eternal joy, which is the consummation of the life already begun in the soul, saying, Come, ye blessed children of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'

"Thus Christ is the sole fountain and source from which eternal life flows to sinners. Life is in him essentially, and in him efficiently. He bestows the life of acceptance, the life of holiness, and the life of glory. In him, as the living Head, all the body of the church by joints and bonds having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.' He, and he only, is in possession of all that life which is the salvation of men. The Father is propitiated through his sacrifice, has exalted him by his own right hand, and has given him the Spirit without measure, in order that he might bestow everlasting salvation on sinners, by raising them to spiritual life now by his grace, and to the full fruition of eternal life at the resurrection of the last day." (P. 104-106.)

Such is the sublime and spiritual strain of doctrine, in which this able and faithful preacher enforces the distinguishing tenet of the Reformed Church, or, as we should rather say, of the Christian revelation. The total reliance on the Son of God, amounting to a mystical union with the fountain of grace and source of life and immortality, is no doubt very strongly expressed in the pas