to all the calls of duty, to self-respect, and to the admonitions of conscience; he may be so under the influence of impetuous and raging passion, that it may be morally certain that, though he has ample power, he never will forsake his evil way unless an influence from above shall arrest and change him. So it is in the matter of salvation. We think we can show that a moral agent, such as man is, has all necessary natural ability to obey the law of God; to comply with the terms of the gospel; to repent of his sins; to love his Maker; to forsake the ways of transgression; to lead a holy life. We think a sinner lacks no natural ability to enable him to attend seriously to the subject of religion; to give up his heart to God; to avail himself of the offers of mercy and be saved. We think here is a field of possible human agency, very interesting and very broad, which might be occupied, though it never has been by man. This view we think results from the very nature of moral agency and accountability, nor have we any way of vindicating the character of God if he requires of man more than in any sense he has the power to render. Such a doctrine we think is a violation of the principles of judgment in moral matters with which our Creator has endowed us, and we think it equally clear that it is contrary to the Bible.

But all this may be so, and yet it may be certain that no man will of himself ever put forth his power, or do what he might do in the matter of his own salvation. It is a power which has never been exercised-probably the only power that has always lain wholly dormant in the human soul. Man does not seem to be endowed with any power to move masses of matter, which he has not at some time exercised. He does not seem to have any power to brave the cold of the north, or to climb mountain heights, or to carry fire and sword into regions of unoffending peace, or to corrupt and destroy his fellow-men, or to resist the elements, which he has not at some time put forth. But there is a dormant power in the soul in the matter of salvation, which man of himself never has put forth and never will. So sunk is he in sin, so absorbed in self, so opposed to holiness and God, so blind to truth and duty, so averse to the cross, so hardened in depravity, that this power never has been exerted, self-originated, since the fall, and all calculations of success in religion on the basis of the expectation that man wILL exert it are vain. You may satisfy his understanding that there is a God, perfectly pure and lovely, but you have done nothing to induce him to love him; you may convince his reason of the claims of christianity, but you have made no advances towards leading him cordially to embrace it; you may press all the motives upon his conscience drawn from his infinite obligations, and the claims of a perfect law, but you have gained no point where the sinner yields; you may appeal to all his interests, and urge all the solemn considerations you can draw from the hope of heaven and the dread of hell-from the desirableness of a peaceful death and a crown of glory, but you have done nothing to induce him to embrace that religion with which he knows all this is to be identified. You may describe the

crown of glory, and the white robe of salvation, and the river of life, and the throne of God, so that the description would thrill through the bosom of an angel, but you have done nothing to move the heart of man. And you may portray the flames, the blackness, and torments of an eternal hell, so that all heaven would tremble if the description were given there, and you have done nothing to move, arouse, or alarm man. Not a point is gained; not even momentary alarm is excited; nor from the deepest scene of wo and sorrow can the sinner of himself be induced for a moment to turn the eye on the bright fields of glory before him.

We know this is an anomaly; and we feel it—but still it is so. Every where else, except in religion, we have a strong assurance of success when we appeal to men's reason, and conscience, and to their obvious and undeniable interest. Here we have none. They sit unmoved when listening to the most affecting and awful truths of religion; or if moved it is only when they are roused to offer resistance. For any thing that they care, the groans of Calvary might have been prolonged to the end of time; and for any effort which they will make, the harps of salvation might be unstrung forever. They follow the world when they know it will deceive them; they run the round of giddy vanity when they know it is all false and hollow; they listen to the syren voice of pleasure when it has a thousand times betrayed them; they indulge in wild and tumultuous passions when they know they will ruin them; they refuse to return to God when conscience, and reason, and hope, and fear, all prompt them to secure the salvation of the soul. They are haters of God, when they have abundant power to be his friends; degraded slaves to passion, when they might be ennobled freemen; miserable, when they might be happy; troubled, anxious, and sad, when they might be calm; trembling under the dread of death, when they might look on it with triumph; restless, jaded and dissatisfied, when their bosoms might be the abode of peace; and expiring without hope when the dying bed might be irradiated by a flood of glory poured down from heaven. Such is man; and whatever may be said about his ability—and much may be said-it is still true, always has been true, always will be true, that men "will not come to God that they might have life." He that goes forth preaching the gospel, or in any other good work, making it the basis of his calculation that men will of themselves be disposed to yield, and become christians, is destined to the same disappointment that Melancthon was. "I thought," said he, "that I could persuade every man to be a christian; but I found the old Adam too strong for the young Melancthon." He may see them convinced of the truth of religion under his preaching; sílenced by his demonstrations; kept at bay by his undisputed learning or talent, but he will not see them yield the heart to God. He may see them become restless under the truth which he urges; or curling the lip in scorn at some of his positions; or trembling like Felix under his reasonings; or almost converted like Agrippa by his argument; or aroused and wondering like Festus; or grieved like the young man

who had great possessions, but he will see no giving up of the heart to religion. He may minister for decades of years-till preacher and hearer grow grey together-to those who are convinced of the truth of these things, but they will not yield; or he may see his hearers turning their backs on his ministry, and fleeing from the house of God foreverthough convinced that all that he says is true. Such is preachingarduous, difficult, strange, glorious, Godlike work! And if these things are so, then the ground of calculation of success is not on what man will do, but must be found in a sovereign God.

III. In the third place, I observe, therefore, that the divine sovereignty is a more certain basis of calculation of success in efforts to promote religion, than any thing else is. This might be presented as an inference from what has been said, for if we can depend neither on the power, nor the willingness of man, then we have no other basis of hope than in God. But I choose to present it as a separate argument. It will thus be a step towards a just conclusion, as well as corroborate what has been said. I observe, then, that you can make no certain calculation on any thing else. This is true in all other things, and it is true also in religion. You cannot calculate with absolute certainty on a continuance of even what are called the laws of nature-the most fixed things of which we have any knowledge-for God has power at any moment to change them. The statesman cannot calculate with certainty how men will act in given circumstances, familiar as he may be with the records of the past;-for the past has not been observed with sufficient care, and to sufficient extent; the motives of men have not been sufficiently understood; the lessons which history might teach are not well enough learned;—or the will, and passions, and prejudices of men come in as a disturbing cause, and disappoint all his sagacious plans and prophecyings-for who can with certainty estimate the power of the human will and human passions as a disturbing cause in the execution of his schemes of policy, any more than the mariner can estimate the power of the whirlwind and the tempest in disturbing his voyage? You cannot calculate with certainty on the return of a richly freighted ship from a distant port, or on a harvest, or on the success of any enterprize-for a thousand disturbing causes come in, which you cannot forsee, to frustrate your plans. Health may fail, or a blight may come over your fields, or the locust may devour, or the palmer worm may consume what he has left, or the wind may blow from some unforseen quarter, or pirates may swarm on the deep, and all your calculations shall fail. So it is in doing good, and especially in the effort to convert a sinner from the error of his way, and to promote religion in the world, there is nothing in man that can be a basis of certain calculation and of hope. The sinner has a conscience;-but you are by no means certain that he will allow it to perform its proper functions as the vicegerent of God. He may silence its reproofs by direct effort; he may pervert its decisions by bad philosophy or theology; or he may indulge in sin till it is seared as with a hot iron. He has an understanding;-but you are by no means certain

that it will be allowed to perform its just offices. It may be blinded in its views; perverted in its judgments; or directly resisted by the will when it would lead the soul to God. He has a heart;-but you have no security that it will love right things, or that all its affections will not be perverse and ruinous. You have no basis of calculation that when you present a holy object to the human heart it will be loved; none that when the most vile and debasing is presented the affections will not cling and cluster around it. The sinner has a will;-but in religion its decisions are more likely to be wrong than right; they will be certainly wrong, we think, unless the grace of God shall incline to that which is good. The sinner has great interests at stake, and he was so made by his Creator as to be fitted to act in view of them, but you have no evidence that he will do it. He is more likely to seek a gilded bauble than the diadem of glory; and the most worthless gewgaw, or withering night-shade, this side the grave, has more attractions in his eye, than the infinite riches and the crown incorruptible beyond. you make a calculation that the sinner will of his own accord suffer the powers of his understanding, and heart, and will, to act in accordance with their lofty nature, and to lead him to God, you will certainly be disappointed. The experience of the world is against you. Thousands, and millions, and hundreds of millions, have lived and died impenitent under all the solemn truths and appeals which you can bring to bear on their hearts, and you have no truth and no power of argument which has not been tried in vain countless numbers of times.

If

But how can the sovereign power of God be made the basis of calculation of success in efforts to do good? I answer, (1) none of the causes which defeat your plans will affect his. No tempest shall howl from an unforseen quarter to frustrate his purposes; no blight or mildew shall disappoint his hopes; no obduracy of the human heart, or perverseness of the will, can operate as a disturbing cause to his plans; no loss of health, or life, or change of times, can stay the execution of his fixed schemes. I answer, (2) God has purposes of mercy about the salvation of man which can be a basis of calculation. He had at Corinth; he has in reference to every age, and to every land. He meant that the gates of hell shall never prevail against his church; he said that his "word should not return to him void;" he has solemnly sworn that to him "shall every knee bow and every tongue confess." The Savior said, "other sheep have I which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice;" (John x: 16.) and there are those who were "chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy and without blame before him in love; being predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will," (Eph. i: 4. 4.) and nothing can prevent their being brought into the kingdom. I answer, (3) the purposes of God are those which contemplate the gathering in of those who shall be saved, in connexion with appropriate human efforts, and especially the preaching of the gospel. It is not by the exertion of independent power; it is not by miracles; it is in con

nexion with the use of means adapted to the end. And though some may be saved by means and influences which we cannot trace, yet the great law is, that it is in connexion with appropriate efforts that men are to be saved. Beyond those efforts, there is no certain basis of calculation in regard to the salvation of men. Within them, it is limited to the sovereign purpose of God, and were there no such purpose those efforts would be in vain. That purpose lies deep in the Eternal Mind. It has lain there undisturbed from the infinite past. It has been unchanged as suns have risen and set; as kingdoms have been founded and fallen; as human schemes have been formed, modified, and abandoned; as stars have been created and have disappeared. In all these revolutions the mind of God about human salvation has been one-without any new purpose, without any change of place, without any tendency to its being abandoned or defeated. "He doeth according to his pleasure in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him what doest thou." Dan. iv: 35. "I am God," says he," and there is none like me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are yet to be done, saying, MY COUNSIL SHALL STAND, AND I WIIL DO ALL MY PLEASURE." Isa. xlvi: 10. It is that immutable counsel which constitutes all the basis of calculation for success in doing good in this lost world. And that is enough. What more desirable basis of calculation CAN there be, than the unchanging purpose of an infinitely benevolent God?

IV. There is a fourth consideration to which I shall just advert, though the time will not allow me to do the justice to it which I could desire. It is, that the actual exercise of that sovereignty is such as to be an encouragement to effort. In the case of the apostle Paul at Corinth, guilty and wicked as that city was, his success there was such as was fitted to lead him to rely more and more on the sovereign purpose of God to save men. The same was true elsewhere. No man probably ever went forth to an important enterprize under a more abiding conviction of the truth of the doctrine of divine sovereignty than did the apostle Paul. "I have planted," said he, " and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So neither is he that planteth any thing, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." 1 Cor. iii: 6. 8. "I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." 1 Cor. xv: 10. So the preservation of the church in dark periods; the revivals of religion which have attended the preaching of the gospel; the success which has attended every well formed plan for doing good, all show how much encouragement there is in these efforts to depend on the sovereign mercy of God. Paul himself was arrested when there was no human basis of calculation that would cheer the hearts of a bleeding church that the great persecutor would be converted; and in thousands of similar instances, the infidel chieftain, the persecutor, the scoffer, the profane, the man proud in philosophy and confident in his own righteousness, the man educated, as Paul was, for a different pur