your feelings on this subject! I do not ask you for them, for it is but folly to exhort to that which in its very nature must come forth spontaneously; but I anticipate them; I will give expression to them-I will put for you in words the deep emotions which have been already gathering in your minds; and I am sure I shall but speak your own sensations, when I exclaim from this great subject,-How base then is our ingratitude! Is this the love of God to us! and has He parted with and sacrificed so much to manifest it plainly to our souls! And where has been our love to him! where the issuing of the heart in praise and adoration and devotedness. Alas! how many of us have heard of this compassion, and have turned with heedless mind from its remembrance. As the unconscious calmness of an infant, when its mother has risked her life in some great deed of heroism for its safety; so is the mind of many, many decent, amiable, so-called Christians: warm with human feeling: touched by human kindness: alive to deeds of grandeur and devotion in their fellow men; yet listless, drowsy, cold, dead, when told of God's compassion, of divinest love! O the base ingratitude, the worse than childish apathy of mind! Is this the object of its manifestation? Is it for this that it has been proclaimed? To leave us only where we were,

immersed in earthly cares, and warmed with earthly feelings; but no eye directed towards our heavenly friend, no springing up of heart towards Him who died to save us!-nay, worse than where we were: flattered, perhaps, into presumptuous hope: soothed into greater petulance and disobedience: nay, hardened into something like contemptuousness: and "despising the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering; not knowing," not remembering, not considering, the one object and aim of all this goodness," not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance." No, Brethren, I will not believe this of you: it is rather because you dwell not on this love: it is because its mild and gentle glories are obscured amidst the glare and tinsel of the world: because its soft and secret voice is drowned amidst the din of other things: this is the reason it af fects you not-and you have but to pause; to stand in rapt surprise before it; to listen to its soothing whisper; and soon will it brighten forth before your eye, and swell into a note of rapture in your heart, to which its every string must, from their very nature, give a full response !" We love Him because He first loved us!"

And from such a heart so touched and so

responding—and, O may many such be here!— methinks I see another feeling bursting up, which I thus re-echo and express: How true and zealous shall be my devotedness! "What

shall I render to the Lord for all the benefits that He hath done unto me! I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord! I will pay my vows unto the Lord, in the presence of all his people!" Brethren, I know that gratitude is restless and unquiet till it testify itself in deeds; and therefore it will sedulously seek the means of pleasing Him, our Benefactor and Redeemer! Let me but understand his will! let me but know myself wherein I fall below it, and where I must watch and pray, and in what direction I must labour to glorify my God! "The love of Christ constraineth me:"-" I reckon, that if one died for all, then they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but Him that died for them!"

"I am not my own: I am bought with a price therefore would I glorify God in my body and in my spirit, which are God's!" And let this, then, be our final feeling: a feeling to remain, and dwell, and live within our minds. "What wouldst Thou have me to do?"-" Show me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths! Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for Thou art the God of my Salvation!"

SERMON IV.

GOD MANIFESTED BY HIS SPIRIT.

1 JOHN, IV. 12, 13.

No man hath seen God at any time: If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of his Spirit.

GOD in himself is inscrutable,-is not revealed, and cannot be. But, for us, to every useful purpose, He does manifest himself by his Works, by his Son, and by his Spirit. By the first, he reveals his Power and Authority as our Creator: by the second, his Compassion as our Deliverer by the third, his Sympathy, his whole heart, as our Friend. And these manifestations stand in importance as they do in time. He who knows God only by the two former, has but heard of Him by the hearing of the ear he alone who knows Him by the

third, the closing, personal manifestation, is really and effectually acquainted with Him.

And this is the doctrine of St. John throughout the Epistle from which our text is taken. There were many who boasted a knowledge of God; of his nature, mysteries, and perfections; yet their hearts were unsanctified, and their lives unholy.* But he only, argues the Apostle, who has been quickened and renewed by God-he only who has derived from him Light, and Love, and Holiness, really knows Him.† No one has ever seen God as an object of perception; but, if we experience in our hearts that Love which is his essential principle, then we find Him subjectively (experimentally) within us: we have fellowship with the Father: we are intimately acquainted with Him: we have actual intercourse with Him as our Friend; and our thoughts and feelings are but the products, and expression, and therefore the evidence, of his Spirit dwelling in us. He that exhibits a disposition like God's disposition, which is Love, shows that he possesses the Spirit of God; but he that has the Spirit of God, has God's whole heart revealed to him.

This, I say, is the doctrine of the Epistle,

* See 1 John, ii. 4, 9; i. 6; iii. 17.

+ See 1 John, ii. 3, 5; i. 7.