fect; for the substance of all the kindness of Jesus Christ will at last amount to this: it will say to the heart,-Is this thy kindness to thý friend? Look at him, see what he suffered for you, and know what he invites you too; and then, ungene-. rous as you are, ungrateful as you are, offend bim if thou canst. The righteousness of the gospel therefore always fills the man who has lived a wicked life with a just abhorrence of his own sin: he is no longer proud, lofty, presumptuous, but meek, diffident, and humble. It teaches him to repent; and though prudence may forbid his. exposing his state to his dearest friend, yet nothing will stand in the way between him and his God. Sometimes when he reads in scripture the majesty and glory of God, a tear will steal down his cheek, merely from his recollecting, this is the God that I have blasphemed! When he hears God proclaiming his laws, and reads, Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day, the tear will steal down his cheek from this thought,the justice as well as the kindness of this law, should have wrought upon me, but I have been Insensible to both.

Suppose on the other hand a man of the most decent character, and yet a stranger to the principles of christianity. There are such men ; decent men without christianity! Now to such people when the gospel comes, it discovers the imperfection of all their decency, and as it were takes them aside, and says-Do not glory on account of your morality; you would have been the same if

Christ had never come into the world; you would have been the same if God had never commanded you to be moral; you are so from inclination, or education; you are not so from principles of obedience to God, or of love to Christ.

In a word, the righteousness of the gospel appears from that full conviction of imperfection which it carries into the bosom of every one of its disciples. My brethren, this is the reason that a good man is an amiable, humble man; a man not apt to be fierce, not given to controversy, not proud of his own dogmatical opinions. He is not one who thinks and speaks as if he were inspired, and who in all companies must be respected as if he were the oracles of God: who thinks that he has nothing to do but to consult his own judgment;—perhaps I wrong him, perhaps I should have said, his own foolish fancies and prejudices. -The good man is one who understands the gospel of Christ as a body of wisdom, in the presence of which his knowledge is all comparative folly; as a body of virtue, in the presence of which his virtue is all comparative weakness and vice; as a body of happiness, in the presence of which, his enjoyments, however just and lawful, are only the playthings of a child. I call this a well instructed christian.

Let us finish. I said the righteousness of the gospel should be seen in the last moments of a

christian.

We visit people sometimes in their dying moments; not that we can do any thing for them;

there is no magic in our visits; we have very little hope of people at that awful period who have lived without religion. For is that a time to make them reasonable christians? Is that a time to instruct men to form principles, to infer consequences, to act on well settled judgments of their own? Alas no! But my brethren, when we have visited the beds of dying persons, we have observed that the source of that exquisite misery they suffer, (and that is a time when the pains of nature should not be increased) is the recollection of past sin. O says one, my broken Sabbaths! O, says another my neglected bible! O, says another, my forgotten God! O, says another, how have I lived without the practice of religion !-What is all this? What voice is this I hear in these frightful moments? Why it is much repentance effected in a little time; which the mercy of God enables men to perform, and therefore it throws into the soul a great deal of quick recollection; a great many attentions to past follies. On the other hand, we have seen people in their dying moments, not placing their dependance for acceptance with God on what they were doing or had done, but taking pleasure in the review as proof that they were interested in Jesus Christ.-With what pleasure does a dying christian look back on a day well spent in pious, devout exercises ! With what satisfaction does such an one look back on acts of kindness done to his fellow creatures! He recollects, perhaps, no new promise, but what satisfaction in the reflection-Ļ

am certain I shall find such mercy in my God, as I have shown to my fellow creatures. Was it not the voice of God that said,-Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.-My heart has been affected with benevolent dispositions to mankind, and I have been able to relieve many, and willing to relieve more; and now Lord I claim thy promise; now the merciful wants to find mercy.-What is this I say, but the righteousness of the gospel?

But the grand display of this righteousness will be at the last judgment. When Christ will make, not such a distinction as takes place in our world, between family and family, party and party, country and country, but the grand distinction between the righteous and the wicked. He shall set these on his left hand, and those on his right; and he shall say to the righteous, come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for · you from the foundation of the world. And he shall say to the wicked, depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared (not originally for you) but for the devil and his angels.

My fellow christians, I sum up all with that fine expression in the text, and on which I wish to fasten your attention. The text has said much to us in telling us that the sun of righteousness arises with healing in his wings. Now remember that whenever vice tempts us, it can have no force over us, and the power of the temptation is lost if vice appear in its own colours: bad as we

D

ances.

may be, we are forced to be seduced by appearIt is not naked evil that is the object of men's pursuit, but evil under the appearance of good. Would to God that we could this evening learn this great truth, that there is nothing but STERLING RIGHTEOUSNESS good for us. Nothing is good for youth but rectitude; nothing is good for middle age but rectitude; nothing is good for old age but rectitude; and as for those who turn aside to crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity, but peace shall be upon Israel.

May the blessing of God attend what has been said.