rest.

strained obedience; vain indeed, that we draw near to him with our lips, while our heart is far from him! By all such wretched trifling with our own eternal souls, we cannot but come short of the promise left us of entering into his Without feeling ourselves labouring and burdened sinners, we cannot aspire after redeeming mercy, nor in any sincerity or truth, desire rest. And when we desire it, we can find it only in him; for in all other ways, persons, and objects wherein we seek it, we shall infallibly come short of it. Through the love of God in Christ, as the alone and appointed channel, the affections find rest, with abundant satisfaction, quietness, and assurance for ever.

May it be more than ever our united prayer, that he may give us all that never-dying principle of love to carry us onward through our whole journey, and at last bring us safely home to the mansions prepared for his people in our heavenly Father's house.

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SERMON XVI.

CHRISTIAN INTERCOURSE.

MALACHI iii. 16, 17.

Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

MORE than any other of the inspired writers, Malachi may be called the prophet of the Advent, inasmuch as he speaks more clearly than any other of the Messiah as nigh at hand. In his four instructive chapters, after predicting fully the calling of the Gentiles, he exhorts the people of God to keep in remembrance the law of Moses, while looking for and expecting the gospel of Christ. In our text he shows one of their pecu

liar and comforting privileges to be that intercourse of holy souls in which our own church professes her belief, under the term of "the communion of the saints" upon earth. He states that intercourse to be recorded on high to their honour, and describes their future happiness in heaven by a direct and distinguishing promise. That we may be enabled to inquire with profit as well as interest, into our personal fitness for it may the Lord, by his Spirit, enlighten our minds to perceive, and warm our hearts to value it; may he open the eyes of our understanding to discern it; and may he give us possession of those spiritual riches, without which it is impossible.

In human life it is as necessary a principle, that outward actions take the colour of inward motives, as it is in vegetable life, that the visible branches show the nature of the unseen root. It will be all but superfluous to remark, that what is in the fountain pure, cannot be otherwise in the stream that flows from it. In man, the fountain is the heart, and his daily conversation the stream proceeding from it; "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Then if this source of man's affections be corrupt, the issues from it, in his thoughts, purposes, and actions, must be corrupt also; "the tree being evil, it cannot bring forth good fruit." In nothing did our adored Lord outshine all other teachers more than in this, that he stripped both the agent and

the action of all disguises, and, by laying bare the human heart, as it exists before conversion to God, shows at once the seat of all moral disorder, the overflowing spring of all misery and evil; "make the tree good, and the fruit will be good ;" leave it in its naturally unsound state, and it cannot produce good fruit. Hence, on the one hand, however dissimilar in outward form or circumstance are the tastes or habits of unregenerate men, in this they all exactly concur, so long as they continue unregenerate, their entire habits and tastes must be earthly, and cannot savour of the things of God. To give but a single instance, however opposed the great parties, into which nations are divided, on questions of policy or of state expediency, they always find one common rallying point of union; while they remain mere children of this world, they always associate in their hostility to real, personal, spiritual religion. Hence too, on the other hand, however various the shades of opinion, and, on minor points, however different the manners which different kinds of education, different early prepossessions, and even different family customs, may occasion amongst God's people, in this they are all alike, for in this there is never any but a cordial consent, that they unfold and pourtray in their daily walk, the marked, decided, and open sway of vital gospel truth over their consciences, their judgments, and their hearts.

And this engagement of the soul in each class being a total and absorbing one, its effect on each class extends to the conversation and social intercourse. To the worldly man, the serious occupation of the soul with the things of eternity and heaven, is a very enigma, for as in his eye that man appears either hypocritical or weak who looks with the indifference of a weaned spirit on the gains, the pleasures, and pursuits of this lower scene, so to his ear any conversation sounds like pure enthusiasm or madness which tests the value of those pleasures and pursuits only at the bar of God's infallible word. So also the spiritual man, since he is seeking his happiness in that totally opposite direction, in which alone the same word declares he can find it, with all the earnestness of an entire conviction that it shall be given him in Christ Jesus; since through grace his affections are thus deeply, and powerfully, and constantly "set on things above and not on things on the earth," he cannot but give utterance to his own desire after them, and to his unaffected sorrow that they are so little prized by dense crowds of his fellow men. The wisdom of the world is conversant about the things of the world alone, and consequently the talk of myriads is about nothing else. But the wisdom of the world above is conversant about the things of an endless hereafter in peace or misery, the first preparation for which is the mortification of the soul to this lower scene,