will desert us, if we disbelieve his word, neglect his warning, or resist his power. We may not be visited with severe scourges and afflictions externally in this world; but we shall feel a corroding and restless anguish within our hearts. We may not be enwrapped in outer and preternatural darkness; but we shall be lost and bewildered in a mental gloom, which will shut out from our sight the beams of God's refreshing grace,—the benignant countenance of our blessed Saviour, and the rays of holy light which cheer the paths of good men, and guide them onward,-shining more and more, till they open upon "the perfect day" of everlasting happiness. The offended Majesty of heaven will, if we turn from the way of our duty, and persevere in a course of sin, overtake us with those visitations which our disobedience has deserved. We shall suffer in the present life the natural and incidental consequences of our wickedness, and shall be more signally punished in that great day, when he, who once visited the world, as the Saviour of mankind, shall again appear as their Judge! Alarming and heart-rending will his approach be to all who have neglected his laws and the keenest sufferings which their fears can represent to them will be more than accomplished. Yet it is not to the servile quality of fear, that his blessed Gospel applies itself with the greatest force; but it is to the free and genial quality of love. A willing, not a constrained obedience, is what our Lord requires of us. He teaches us to hope for divine happiness, by regarding his heavenly Father as our Father also, and to cultivate, accordingly, a filial love for Him as the characteristic and pervading affection of our hearts. This is the bond that will unite Him with us;-the tie that constitutes the notion and the reality of religion itself;-the test of our faithfulness to Christ,-the condition,-the indispensable condition of our receiving the comfort and fellowship of the Holy Ghost,-and of our being admitted to the common joy of our triumphant Saviour and of his "Father which is in heaven." SERMON VIII. ON THE DUTY OF REVERENTIAL CAUTION IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. HEBREWS xii. 28. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. To ascertain the exact meaning of this text, it will be necessary not only to analyze the terms in which it is expressed, but to consider the situation of the persons to whom St. Paul was writing. The Epistle to the Hebrews was addressed to such of the inhabitants of Judea as had originally been Jews, but were afterwards converted to the Christian faith. Its object was, to keep them steadfast in their profession of the Gospel, by warning them against returning to their former state of Judaism, to which the unbelieving part of their countrymen were eager to entice them. For these reasons it is, that the whole of this Epistle is occupied with arguments, which, at that time, none but persons who were conversant with the Jewish religion, and who had been educated in it, could fully understand. In the verses that precede the text in the chapter before us, the Apostle draws a comparison between the Mosaic and the Christian dispensations. He sets forth the circumstances of fire, and darkness, and shaking, that accompanied the delivery of the law on Mount Sinai; and contrasts these with the milder circumstances of the Gospel. "Ye are come" says he, addressing his Christian converts, "unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel:"-implying that Abel's blood cried to the Almighty for vengeance, but that the blood of Christ speaks to implore pardon for our sins. He then exhorts his converts not to refuse Christ who speaks for them in the language of intercession; for "if they escaped not, who refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven." "Whose voice," at the delivery of the Mosaic law, "shook the earth; but now he hath promised," by the prophet Haggai, "saying, yet once more, I shake not the earth only, but also hea ven." "And this word, yet once more," continues the Apostle, "signifieth the removal of those things that are shaken,”-i. e. the Mosaic dispensation, "as of things that are made,-that those things which cannot be shaken,"-or the Christian dispensation,—“ may remain." Intent, then, upon the privileges and duties of the Christian dispensation, he describes it in the text, as a kingdom which cannot be moved ;-for he says, "Wherefore, we receiving (or while we are receiving) a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." St. Paul does not here speak of himself or of the persons whom he is addressing, as having, by a single, indefeasible act or gift, received the kingdom of Christ, but as being in the course of receiving it. He speaks with the same modesty and diffidence as in the epistle to the Philippians,* where he does not esteem himself to have "already attained," or to be "already perfect ;"-because he evidently regards the Christian religion as a system of discipline ;-and therefore, in another part of this epistle to the Hebrews, he says, "Let us go on unto perfection."t وو The expression in the text, "let us have grace," might, with equal if not with greater propriety, have been translated, "let us retain grace. It It supposes, therefore, that the persons to whom he was writing, already possessed some measure of grace;-and it |