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these extremes of being, the finite and the infinite, which shed such resplendent lustre on His atonement, which stamped such worth and efficacy on His blood. No subject discussed in these pages claims such vast importance as this. I beseech the reader, treat it not lightly. Deem it not a useless speculation. It is of the deepest If the blood of Christ possess not infinite merit, infinite worth, it could never be efficacious in washing away the guilt of sin, or in removing the dread of condemnation. When you come to die, this, of all truths, if you are an experimental believer, will be the most precious and sustaining. In that solemn hour, when the curtain that conceals the future parts, and eternity lets down upon the view the full blaze of its awful realities,-in that hour, when all false dependencies will crumble beneath you, and sin's long catalogue passes in review before youthen to know that, the Saviour on whom you depend is GOD in your nature-that the blood in which you have washed has in it all the efficacy and value of Deity, this, this will be the alone plank that will buoy up the soul in that awful moment, and at that fearful crisis. The author

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lately saw one die. And his testimony to the sustaining power of Christ's Deity in that moment was given in these words-" If Christ was not my Creator, what could I do now?" O precious truth this, for a poor believing soul to rest upon! We wonder not that "he who has Jesus is safe even amid the perils of the sea.' We wonder not that, fast anchored on this truth, amid circumstances the most appalling, death in view, wearing its most terrific aspect, the believer in Jesus can survey the scene with composure, and quietly yield his spirit unto the hands of Him who redeemed it.

* The last words of the Rev. G. Cowles, who with his wife, was lost in the Steampacket "Home," on Cape Hatteras, Nov. 9, 1837.

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"In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness," Zech. xiii. 1.

We have already, in the leading chapter of this work, remarked upon the incompetency of natural reason to understand spiritual truth. Neither the nature, the harmony, or the end of Divine truth can it discern. This incapacity may be traced, not to a deficiency of mental endowment, or to the extreme abstruseness of revelation;-for the weakest intellect, enlightened and sanctified by the Spirit of GoD, may grasp the profoundest doctrine in the great system of theology, so far as the revelation of that doctrine extends

-but, to the want of a spiritually renewed mind. This is the cause, and this only. There is the mind, and there is the truth; the one vigorous, the other lucid; and yet there is no sympathy, the one with the other. How, on other grounds, can it be accounted for? There is no spiritual taste for the investigation of GoD's holy Word. The moral tone of the mind harmonizes not with its holy and lofty themes. The one is on the side of holiness, the other on the side of sin. The one asserts the authority and spirituality of the law, the other assumes the attitude of hostility to that law. Where then is the affinity? where the sympathy? On other subjects it may be at home; here, it is tossed upon an open sea. In the investigation of other themes, it may prove itself a giant in power; here, it betrays the feebleness of a dwarf. It follows then, as a self evident truth, that the mind must be changed, and changed by God Himself, before Divine truth will either be understood or received. Hence we find the Apostle, in behalf of the Ephesian Christian's, thus praying: "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give unto you

the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened," &c. Eph. i. 17, 18.

Of all the doctrines of the Gospel, thus dark and inexplicable to an unrenewed mind, is the doctrine of Christ's Atonement in its especial and gracious design. This can only be understood by a mind awakened to the nature and turpitude of SIN. As the expiation of sin was the great design of Christ's wondrous death, so no individual, thus ignorant of sin, however vast his mental powers, and however firm his belief in the truth of Divine revelation, can discover and welcome this truth. We speak not, and need we again assure the reader, of mere theoretical views of truth. O no! We speak of a higher grade of knowledge than this. There is as wide a difference as possibly can be, between a reception of the truth in the judgment, and the reception of the truth in the heart. Let no man be deceived. To deceive others is awful-but to deceive oneself, more awful yet! It is to this natural darkness; this ignorance of sin; this want of the Spirit's teaching, that we are to attribute all the false and erroneous views that

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