condemnation does not rest with yourselves? Brethren, am I not clear of your blood? Have I not, according to my capacity, proclaimed to you the way of salvation? Have I not added warning to warning, entreaty to entreaty, promise to promise, and prayer to prayer? Have I not publicly and privately entreated God to make you wise to your salvation? The blood, I trust, is not with me; I would not that any spot of your blood in the last day should lie at my door. But if I should be justified, and you are not saved, what comfort, brethren, should I have in this circumstance? Oh, this is what I wish, if I know my heart (and I have searched it often, and searched it deeply) even your salvation; to present you blameless, holy, and acceptable, to God by Jesus Christ; to rejoice in you as not now doubtful in your character and profession, but as truly devoted to him; to know that you are as a brand snatched from the everlasting burnings.

Consider, in summing up these affectionate observations, that if you perish, you perish under aggravated guilt. You have had the Gospel proclaimed: you have had line upon line, and teaching upon teaching. You die rejecting the remedy of mercy; you die, if indeed you die and perish, trampling under your feet the blood of the everlasting covenant, and despising all the manifestations of divine love and pity. Therefore be urged at this time to call upon God; flee from the wrath which is to come; know your circumstances as guilty, lost, and perishing sinners; that you are in the hands of an angry God, and that, if you are found at last in the hands of that God, you will sink from hope and blessedness, to rise no more.

Brethren, pray with me for those who are still dead in sin. Brethren, let the silent and united prayer arise, that they may now be quickened, that they may now live, that they may now be accepted in Christ; and that now, listening as for the last time, to the voice of one they have loved, they may press, and be pressed into the kingdom of heaven.

There is another view to take of our circumstances. Undoubtedly if we are spared to meet again by an indulgent Providence, many changes, and many serious changes, will necessarily have transpired. It has been said to me by more than one in the course of the last week, “Ah, sir, there will be great changes before you shall return:" and the individuals who have given utterance to such feelings have only expressed my own awakened feelings, that there will be changes, and that those changes will amount to the great change of death. Brethren, I may occupy this desk again; brethren, I may look around upon this crowded assembly; but, brethren, never, no never, shall I see you all so assembled again. It is not in the course of nature, it is not in the order of things, to expect, after so lengthened a separation, that we should all meet again in this sanctuary. Some of you will die: it is not for me to say who shall be summoned; it is very likely that the summons will come to those whom I have been least disposed to calculate. One says, the aged will die: it is most likely the young will receive the summons. One points to weakness and decrepitude, and says it is very likely their death will happen: it is very likely that the healthy and the robust will be called away instead of those. Two years ago, when, under a painful visitation, I left you for a short season, I looked around at the close of the service, and indulged in imagination the thought of what changes might happen by death; and there sat before me one individual, remarkably in health and robustness, promising for continued life, and I was led to say to myself, "At all events I shall see that friend again:" but there death came; there the summons was suddenly given, and suddenly obeyed;

and he whom I most expected to see in the flesh I saw no more. Brethren, some will die; and some will die, I trust I may say, to use Scriptural language, will die in Christ-will die in Christ. And though you shall be called to die in the absence of your pastor, think not that you will die in the absence of his remembrance. No; wherever I shall sojourn, my prayer shall attend you in the last hour; my imagination shall surround that period of affliction, and conceive of you as sustained by Almighty power to the last and through the worst my imagination and faith shall follow you in the upward ascent to the celestial and holy world, as mingling with the better condition of the Church, and made happy in God for ever. You will die in Jesus; and to die in Christ

is to be blessed, is to receive the consummation of all hope and all the promises which he has spoken.

But there are some who will die away from this congregation, in that interval, who will, it is to be feared, not die in Christ, but die in sin. They are now in a state of sin, and separation, and distance from God; they are disposed perhaps to postpone and to trifle with the claims of religion upon them in the period of health and youth; and it will not be remarkable if, in the course of Providence, they are given up to hardness of heart, and, if they are called suddenly to die, are left without life, and without grace, and without mercy. My beloved hearers, you may die. If you should die in Christ, your death would be peace, your end would be blessed. But oh, to die in sin! What, after having been raised almost to heaven-after having been entreated so much to approach the Divine Saviour-after having exercised so many hopes in reference to your recovery and blessedness-to die in sin, to fall from the presence of God, to sink into a state of condemnation, and to be banished from him by the greatness of his power for ever! Supplicate, I beseech you, that this may not happen; that, if death shall visit you, he may visit you as a messenger of mercy; and that you may be prepared for that event, and for that final change which concludes all change, and commences an eternity of joy, or an eternity of woe.

Brethren, generally, I would say, Indulge confidence in reference to your minister during the period of separation. I would have you without anxious care; I would have you, in the exercise of a kind affection, still to rely on the Providence and care of the Eternal Jehovah. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, rest in his Providence: commit yourselves, and those you love, to his divine care, and believe that he will accomplish whatever is kind, and gracious, and holy amongst yourselves, and amongst those who are dear to you. Be assured, that you will be cherished in the heart and remembrance of your minister; that, travel where he may, he will not forget you; that, occupied as he may be, his thoughts, and his love, and his imagination, will still return to your assemblies, will still visit you in your Sabbaths, and will still imagine to himself the blessing of the Almighty, the Most High, descending upon you. Let us then separate in holy confidence in his care, in cherished love towards one another as the children of one family, as passing to and fro in the world in life, under the convoy of heavenly engagement, and as looking to the consummation of all trial and calamity here, in the perfection of our hopes and our blessedness hereafter.

Brethren, peace be with you; the peace of God be upon you; the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you; the fellowship of the Holy Spirit attend you; the angels of heaven minister unto you; the Most High himself establish you, and cause his beauty to appear unto you, and his glory unto your children, age after age, and Sabbath after Sabbath. Even so, Amen.

THE NATURE AND AUTHOR OF SALVATION.

REV. J. CUMMING, M.A.

SCOTCH CHURCH, CROWN COURT, COVENT GARDEN, JAN. 15, 1834.

"Look unto me,

and be ye saved all the ends of the earth."-ISAIAH, xlv. 22.

THE glorious end which the Spirit contemplates in calling upon all the ends of the habitable globe to look unto Jesus is their salvation. There is no intended enriching of men with the titles, and the honours, and incomes of earth; there is no intended extension of the span of mortality, or wisdom, or scientific attainments of man. These are beheld by the Creator of men as scarcely worth a moment's reflection, while everlasting concerns remain unknown and unravelled, or disproportionately felt by those whom they wholly concern. Oh, my brethren, how much, how infinitely better, to pass through the storm and tempest below, and land in the sunshine and calm above, than to float softly forward on the stream of delight, and plunge at last in an ocean of misery! Oh! what matters it, my friends, that we have stemmed the tide of adversity here, or breasted the terriblest blasts of the winter, or mourned, or suffered, if yonder there await us a rest and a refuge-joys that pall not and never can expire. If you saw your child sinking amid the waters of the deep, would you feel that the time for gathering pebbles to amuse him, or meditating schemes of improving his mind? Would you not rather dash into the waves, and at the risk of your life, rescue the child from his perilous situation? Even so the Almighty sees that the short time that is measured out to humanity, needs something better than trifles on which to expend itself. He sees man on the brink of an eternal world; he sees his eternal welfare at stake; and therefore he lays before us not the means of advancing our comfort, or health, or prosperity, but the means of saving our souls-the means of securing a right and a title to glory. And when we coolly weigh matters, and reflect what is the possession that will cheer us at death, and weave a wreath of smiles around our closing lips-what is it, think ye, that will infuse into the parting soul the intensest joys on the last sick-bed? Is it, think ye, the renown our literary or warlike efforts have achieved? Is it the gold that glistens in the overflowing coffer? Is it the remembrance of our voluptuous joys, our bacchanalian Sundays, our prayerless nights and praiseless morns? Oh no! it is the sure hope of acceptance with God; it is our faith in Jesus, which has worked by love, and overcome the world, and purified the heart; it is the conviction that our name is registered in heaven, arising from our nature waked into kindredship with heaven; it is the well-grounded conviction that Christ is ours, and that we are Christ's. If God had pressed on our regards objects less important than salvation in his word and ordinances, oh, when we came to stand amid the

countless multitudes that crowd the last assize, we should have reproached God with setting anything before us to be loved and desired but heaven, or anything to be hated but hell.

We therefore remind you again, that salvation is the grand and exclusive result. We remind you that God regards not whether you be rich or poor, and therefore speaks not for these ends, but for your salvation. Do you ask of the Bible, why it is so full of earnestness, and eloquence, and precept, and example? It will tell you "That you may be saved." Do you ask why a communion table is spread from time to time? It will reply, "That you may

be saved." Do you ask why I have addressed you from this place so often and so fervently? I answer, "That you may be saved." If you could hear the praises of the redeemed-oh, these are so loud and so melodious, because they are saved-If you could hear the wishes of the damned-oh, these are so melting because they cry to be saved, and they cannot. Salvation gained or salvation lost, employs the thoughts and fills the years of Heaven and Hell. How is it that we, standing on this isthmus, on the one side of which are the streams that make glad the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem-and on the other side of which are the dark and moaning streams of Hell—how is it that men, on whose present movements hang the issues of eternity, are so torpid, so dead to considerations that should wake the rocks and stir the vast universe into restless anxiety? We find this great city to be noise, and bustle, and confusion, from morning to night, and from one year to the commencement of another, that men may be rich, and famous, and powerful: but how little desire in our homes, how little anxiety in our churches, to be saved! In our public libraries and museums we see hundreds and thousands ransacking the memorials of the learned dead; but how few with prayerful hearts and eager eyes perusing the repository of life-the Word of the Living God!-How fewer still emulating the conduct of the wise man, who having got a glimpse of the jewel of great price, sold all that he had and bought it. I can here conscientiously exonerate myself, for I have laid before you the infinite importance of Eternity, the immeasurable worth of the soul, the nearness of a judgment-seat, and the unquestionable certainty of death. And if, alas, any of you are summoned to an eternal world, and awakened to serious thought, only by the opening graves, and the congregating dead, and the great white throne, and its august JudgeI bid you remember that your minister told you of these things, and, at the risk of wearying you, put you again and again in mind of them.

I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THIS Word, “and BE SAVED?"—There is implied in it, first, salvation, or deliverance from the dominion, or ascendancy, or power of sin in this world; and secondly, salvation from the consequence of sin― eternal death in the world to come.

There are countless mistakes respecting the nature of that salvation which is so often mentioned in the Word of God. Men are inclined to suppose that it stands in a mere emancipation from physical disaster or bodily disease, a translation beyond the reach of accident or ill, to eternal immunities and pleasures. These ideas of heaven are drawn from the Poets of Greece, or the Koran of the Moslem, and not from the Word of the Living God. They fancy heaven to be an Elysium or Mahomedan Paradise, in which beauty blooms, and wines and fruits of exquisite nature are tasted, and scenes and landscapes of boundless verdure and unfading loveliness are seen. But, to pluck up such notions by the roots,

we bid you revert to man's unfallen condition, and then to his present wreck, and tell us what made the awful change. Oh, was it not sin that poisoned our nature, and all surrounding elements? The moment Eve's foul crime was seen, the blossoms fell, the green face of Eden withered, and a black cloud, fraught with storm and ruin, fell upon our dismantled earth. The instant God's curse was uttered, the gentle winds broke forth into fury, and that groaning of the creation began which the Apostle writes will continue till the restitution of all things.

:

Now, to remove effects, we must remove the cause; and therefore before mortal man can enjoy a heaven, he must be purified from sin: before he can be happy, he must first be holy before he can be saved from sorrow, he must be saved from sin. We therefore hold all means and remedies for man's amelioration hopeless, which do not stand for this grand preliminary step-man's deliverance from sin. We hold the plans of infidels, and Owenites, and whatever other names are to be found in that brood which has been hatched by Satan in these times, to be pernicious whims and wild vagaries, because they pronounce man's happiness attainable amidst man's sins. We hold, moreover, all schemes of national regeneration hopeless, which do not embrace the religious education of the populace, and their emancipation from the slavery of sin. Oh! if you want, ye councillors and statesmen, to make our land to blossom as the rose, and to lift its bosom to the skies, the loveliest by far of all the gems and isles of the sea, send forth a mighty army of preachers of the cross of Jesus, and bid them permeate the crowded lanes and the scattered country population; and knowing, as we do, that the Gospel is the power of God, and that with its honest proclamation there is never wanting the energy and influence of the Spirit of God, we believe that a glorious and a joyful revolution will ensue; we believe that our nobles will be made noble indeed, and our senators assemble in the consciousness of witnessing Heaven, and our councillors be men that fear God and honour the king, and our colleges be vocal with Christian melody and praise, and our Sabbaths have their former sacredness, and an atmosphere of vital Christianity reach from the halls of the great to the hovels of the poor. We believe that with the diminishing of sin will be the rising of happiness; with the ebb of iniquity, the flow of gladsomeness and peace, and with the deepseated and far-spread principles of the Gospel of truth, the embryo of heaven on earth—the outer court at least of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem in which we should worship and adore till admitted in due time within the precincts of the Holy of Holies, whither Jesus our High Priest is for ever entered. Take away sin, and you take away misery. Save men from the power of sin, and you save them from the incubus of wretchedness and woe. Destroy the root, and you destroy the tree; neutralize the poison, and you anticipate its ravages; Llock up the impure fountain, and you check its stream.

Now, brethren, in reviewing my many discourses that are past, I have never endeavoured to make you pleased or happy-nay, I have tried to make you dissatisfied and restless; but I have endeavoured to make you holy, well convinced that if holiness is attained, happiness may safely be left to provide for itself. We might lull you asleep and cry peace, peace, when there is no peace; but we know that this would be the brief prelude to ruin and eternal dismay. We say no peace while there is no godliness; war, we say to the grave, while there is sin lording it over the human heart; restlessness be upon you all, while there is sin within you all. Like the dove of Noah, may you find