SCOTTISH CHURCH.

I.

GOD IS LOVE.

We may here see what evangelical ministers mean, when they tell us of the regenerating power of faith. One of its functions is to justify, but its brighter and greater function is to sanctify man. Let but the cold abstractions of unbelief be removed, and from that moment the emancipated heart, as if by the operation of a charm, will beat freely and willingly in love to God and love to all his servants. This new faith was the turning-point of a new character, and on this single difference between God, viewed as an object of terror and God viewed as an object of confidence, a complete moral revolution is suspended. Let me be made to know and to believe that God loves me, and, by a law of my mental constitution, I shall be made to love Him back again. The intellectual precedes the moral change. It is an article of doctrine, not in the place which it occupies as the dogma of a theological system, but which is actually seated in the heart, and the article thereof a substantial and living creed. It is this which subdues the whole man into a new creature. The executive power of working this great transformation lies in the truth. In other words, let the faith of the Gospel enter into the heart of any individual, and it will renovate the man. Let this faith be universal, and we shall behold a renovated world.

I might here indulge in the prolonged perspective of a regenerated species, and that through the practical stepping-stone of a declared Gospel, so that, if the first doctrine of God's loving the world were as generally accepted as it might be heralded, a nation would be born in a day; but let me urge a lesson, which each of you should carry personally and practically home, and feel how it is, that one

might animate his own heart sacred affection glowing there.

with the love of God, and keep this This is a frequent complaint among

Christians, that their hearts are so cold and insensible, and destitute of love to God. How shall we go about it, to put the love where it is not, or to keep the love alive, which is in danger of going into extinction? It is not to be summoned into being and activity at a call. It is not by any simple or direct method that you put it into operation within you. You can say to the hand, Do this, and it doeth it; but we have no mastery over the heart, nor can any of its movements be subjected to a volition or a pause. We cannot, by an immediate plunge among the recesses of our constitution, conjure up any emotion in it. The true way of putting an emotion into the heart, is to put into the mind its appropriate and counterpart object. If I want to light up resentment in the heart, let me think of the injury which provokes it; or, if I want to be moved with compassion, let me dwell on some picture of wretchedness; or, to be regaled with a scene of beauty, look on the glories of a summer landscape; or, to stir up love, let me call up some kind and friendly benefactor; or, finally, to kindle in my cold and deserted. bosom the love of God, let God's love to me be the theme of my believing contemplation. I shall never light up the affection by looking inwardly upon myself, but upwardly to the Gospel manifestation of the Divine character, and in bringing it down from the sanctuary that is above me. It is faith which elicits and calls out the feeling, and thus both the lessons of the Bible and the experience of the Christian are at one with the strict philosophy of the closet, when they attest, that the way to build up our hearts in the love of God is to build ourselves up in our most holy faith. Hence that scriptural expression, "faith worketh by love;" so that if you want the love of God in your hearts, there is no other way of getting at it than by thinking of God's love to you. Then the Divine love comes unbidden and spontaneous by a law in the constitution of the human heart.

II.

ORDINATION CHARGE.

In thy capacity of preacher or minister of the Gospel I charge thee, as a steward of the mysteries of Christ, to know those ordinances which are entrusted to thy administration. The several parts of public worship thou hast to conduct without the help

of any service-book or curate: no form to guide thee, which I hope thou wilt never nor desire to have. O brother, what a weight lieth upon a minister's shoulders; and what need of largest knowledge and most patient study hath he above all men! -First, then, concerning those Psalms, of which I would not forego one out of the collection for all the paraphrases, hymns, and spiritual songs of these Methodistical times. Thou must taste and deeply drink into the spirit of them, and open them to the flock and congregation; for praise without the understanding is praise without the heart, not pleasant in the ear of God. If thou shouldst find it necessary to open the Psalms a little by way of preface, in order to point out Christ and the Church and the Kingdom in them, thou wilt do well: They are the essence of Divine truth, the divinest of the inspirations of the Spirit, upon which I charge thee to admit no modern innovations, and in their stead to take no modern substitutes. And stir the people up to love and relish them, which is best done by leading them to know and understand them.-Secondly, thy prayers. O brother, what a burden is laid upon thy spirit, to offer in such as this the prayers of the Christian Church: for remember thou pray not for thy people alone, nor for the presbytery alone, nor for the Kirk of Scotland alone, but for the holy Catholic Church and communion of saints; and remember we have not four separate prayers, but as it were four parts of prayer, which together make up the Liturgy of our Sabbath-day. Thou must not indulge the people by saying the same thing twice over, one for the forenoon company, and the other for the afternoon company, who can make it convenient to attend. It is a day's service, a Sabbath's sacrifice; divided as thou best may. Oh, it is an onerous charge, my brother, this of public prayer; I cannot tell thee how it weighs my spirit down: and 1 give it in charge to thee to make this part of the ministry thine especial care. Our Church loveth that it should be extempore, and it is best that it should be so; but oh, fill the fountains of thy spirit every week by secret devotion, and painful meditation, and solemn, careful thought of all things. Preaching cometh next in order, which is as it were the food and nourishment of all the rest, the foolishness of God which is wiser than the wisdom of men, the royal ordinance of the kingdom. Here put forth all thy knowledge, all thy wisdom, all thy strength of manhood, with all the gifts and graces of the Divine nature. Take thy liberty, occupy thy commission: beat down the enemies of the LORD; wound and heal; break down and build up again. Be of no school; give heed to none of their rules and canons. Take thy liberty, be fettered by no times, accommodate

no man's conveniency, spare no man's prejudice, yield to no man's inclinations, though those should scatter all thy friends, and rejoice. all thine enemies. Preach the gospel: not the gospel of the last age, or of this age, but the everlasting gospel; not Christ crucified merely, but Christ risen: not Christ risen merely, but Christ present in the spirit, and Christ to be again present in person. Dost thou take heed to what I say? Preach thy LORD in humiliation, and thy LORD in exaltation: and not Christ only, but the Father, the will of the Father. Keep not thy people banqueting, but bring them out to do battle for the glory of God and of His Church: to which end thou shalt need to preach them the Holy Ghost, who is the strength of battle. And hark ye, brother, be not afraid in these days to be called Antinomian; but preach the gospel freely. Let the sectarian ignorance and malice of this city box the whole compass of heresy with thee as they have done with me, in order to find thy true course; but still while they are blaming and blaspheming be thou preaching the offices of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the salvation of poor sinners. And take a long pull and a strong pull at the work: if they will measure thee, let it be by the hours and not by the minutes. We must lift the barriers up, brethren, and beat the sentinels back, and make room, and make large room, if we would have any use of our weapons, or profit of the fight.— Lastly, come the sacraments, which I pray thee to study from the Scriptures, or any author older than a century; but at thy peril from any later; and give no heed to what is talked upon baptism and the Lord's Supper in these clear-headed times. Brother, to my certain knowledge the atmosphere of theology hath been so long clear and cloudless, that there hath been neither mist nor rain these many years and even to talk of a mystery is out of date. But thou must preach Christ in a mystery, and show the very great mysteries of godliness, especially of these two sacraments. Get thee out of the bright sunshine of the intellect, and meditate the deep mysteries of the Spirit, which the natural man perceiveth not. When they talk of plainness and perspicuity, to thy text, my brother: to thy warfare of prayer and meditation; try the depths; sound with thy deepest line, my brother. Oh, I charge thee enter into the mysteries of these two sacraments: if I should hear of thee setting them forth as bare and naked signs, I will be the first to charge thee with a most dangerous error. Fill these vessels with spiritual water: awaken the faith of the people; let them come to them in earnest faith, not in empty ignorance; in mysterious expectation and assurance of God's spiritual blessing, not in a clear-headed belief that nothing is

to be expected or received. O brother, if I were to tell thee what fruit of my ministry I have had from these two sacraments, thou wouldst not be surprised at the zeal with which my discourse doth clothe itself.

III.

THE MEANING AND EFFICACY OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS.

What is the misery of man? It is that his mind is diseased. He was made to regard and enjoy God as his chief object; and his faculties will not work healthfully in absence of this object. But he has left God, and wearies himself in seeking good from created things. The love of God is to the human spirit what the key-stone is to the arch; ruin is the consequence when it falls from its place. And thus, we see that man's reason bewilders him, and his conscience harasses him,-his imagination deceives and disquiets him,-his passions and affections agitate and torture him. He has a misery wrought into the very elements of his being, independent altogether of positive infliction. This misery is rarely felt in all its force here; sometimes in consequence of the occupation and distraction which the mind finds in external things, it is scarcely felt at all; but when these are removed, the unhappiness is felt. Hence the horror of solitary confinement, without the means of occupation. Hence, also, the misery of the spirit is sometimes even alleviated by external inflictions, because they draw its attention from itself.

When I can lay the blame of my misery on anything external to me, there may be hope of deliverance, for I can distinguish between. myself and my sorrow. But it is a terrific discovery to make, that I am myself my own misery. I had supposed the source of the evil to be elsewhere, and retreated, as I thought within myself. But the more I retreated in that direction, the more intense and intolerable the heat became. My own mind was the furnace. This is indeed appalling, for how am I to escape from myself?

But how, it may be asked, is pardon to cure this misery? We can understand how pardon might remove an external infliction, but how can it remove this internal disease?

I answer: The great cause of the disorder and misery which distract the human mind is averseness or indifference to God. The love of God, the key-stone of the arch, is fallen from its place, and all has, in consequence, gone to wreck. The sense of sin continually increases this averseness of the heart from God, because pollution