which it takes its rise. These indeed are what gives to every action, much more than its consequences, its proper character and denomination; and the principles in which faith is founded appear to be that integrity, that candour, that sincerity of mind, that love of goodness, that reverent sense of God's perfections, which are in themselves the highest of moral endowments and the sources of all other virtues, if indeed there be any virtue which is not contained in these. Faith, therefore, in this view of it, is the full assemblage and sum of all the Christian graces, and less the beginning than the perfection of the Christian character: But if in any instance the force of external evidence should work an unwilling belief where these qualities of the heart are wanting, in the mere act of forced belief there is no merit: "The devils believe and tremble." Hence, we may understand upon what ground and with what equity and reason salvation is promised in Scripture to faith, without the express stipulation of any other condition. Every thing that could be named as a condition of salvation on the gospel plan is

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included in the principle no less than in the effect of that faith to which the promises are made.

On the other hand, it is easy to perceive that the sentence of condemnation denounced against the unbelieving is not to be applied to the ignorance or the error of the understanding; but to that unbelief which is the proper opposite of the faith which shall inherit the blessing, — that which arises from a dishonest resistance of conviction-from a distaste for moral truth-from an alienation of the mind from God and goodness. This unbelief contains in it all those base and odious qualities which are the opposites of the virtue of which true faith is composed : It must be nigh unto cursing," inasmuch as in the very essence and formality of its nature it is an accursed thing.

Lest any thing that has been said should seem to derogate from the merit of the apostles' faith, I would observe, that whatever degree of evidence they might have for some part of their belief, in particular

for the important fact of our Lord's resurrection, they had ample exercise for it in other points, where the evidence of their sense was not to be procured, or any external evidence that might be equally compulsive, for the whole of their faith. For the great doctrines of the Father's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice of himself— of the efficacy of the Mediatorial intercession.

of the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit of the resurrection of the body — of the future happiness of the righteous and misery of the wicked of the future judgment to be administered by Christ, for these and many other articles, the apostles had not more than we the testimony of their senses: It is not therefore to be imagined that they were deficient in that meritorious faith which believeth what it hath not seen; nor is the reproof to Thomas to be extended to the whole of his conduct, but confined to that individual act of incredulity which occasioned it. Thomas, with the rest of the delegated band, set the world a glorious example of an active faith, which they are the happiest who best can imitate: And, seeing faith

hath been shown to partake in its beginnings of the evidence of consciousness itself, and to hold of those first principles of knowledge and intellect of which it cannot be doubted that they are the immediate gift of God, let us all believe; and let us pray to the Father to shed more and more of the light of his Holy Spirit, and to help our unbelief.

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SERMON XLIII.

1 JOHN, iii. 3.

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is

pure.* THAT the future bliss of the saints in glory will in part at least consist in certain exquisite sensations of delight, not such as the debauched imagination of the Arabian impostor prepared for his deluded followers, in his paradise of dalliance and revelry, but that certain exquisite sensations of delight, produced by external objects acting upon corporal organs, will constitute some part of the happiness of the just, is a truth with no less certainty deducible from the

* Preached at the Anniversary of the Institution of the Magdalen Hospital, April 22. 1795.