more and again let me intreat you, to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; because it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."

You may, perhaps, some of you, my brethren, be inclined to regard the anxious and repeated earnestness, with which these holy and awful truths have been impressed upon your thoughts, as unsuitable to the spiritual state of persons, who, like yourselves, are in the habit of duly attending upon the ordinances of religion, of receiving the sacramental elements, of offering up prayers to the throne of grace, and devoutly studying the word of God. You may think them fitted only for babes in Christ, and such as have been imbued with no more than the mere rudiments of faith. Should an imagination so vain have sprung up in your minds, correct it, ere it become strong and dangerous, by considering to whom the words of the text were originally spoken. It was to the Philippians that the Apostle gave this serious and awful warning. It was to the Philippians who had sympathised with him in his bonds, communicated to his wants, ministered to him in his afflictions, obeyed his commandments, loved Christ, and loved each other, that St. Paul addressed this earnest and solemn exhortation. It were in vain for any to

think that they are beyond these Philippians, these beloved disciples of this great Teacher of Christianity, either in knowledge, or in purity, or in safety. It were in vain for any to flatter themselves with the hope of being placed above the reach of spiritual danger, however deep in holy wisdom, however full of holy faith, however perfect in holy practice, or however void of offence towards God and towards man. None but the saints in light; none but the redeemed, the sanctified, or the glorified; none but the angels in heaven, or the spirits of just men made perfect; none but those whom death hath freed from the bondage of sin and corruption, can say that they are free from the obligation of listening to the commandment and warning of the text. Upon all on this side the grave, it is the bounden duty of God's ministers to impress the great necessity of doing the work of salvation, and of doing it diligently and sincerely, tremblingly alive to the consciousness of their own infirmity, fearfully aware of the dreadfulness of a fall, and humbly relying upon the strength of that Almighty arm, which alone can make our feeble efforts effectual to accomplish the work.

DISCOURSE XV.

ISAIAH, chap. i. ver. 16.

"Cease to do evil, learn to do well.”

I NEVER yet sat down to peruse the Word of God, whether from duty or from inclination, without rising from the performance of the task both instructed and pleased; pleased with its varied excellence and unnumbered beauties, and instructed by those important and general rules of life, those useful compendia of the whole duty of man, which are at once the shortest, the most intelligible, and the most comprehensive which were ever given to direct the ways of wanderers. Precepts there are in the Scriptures, such as revealed wisdom only could have taught, yet such as the natural understanding immediately approves. In short, let any man open his Bible with sincerity and devotion; let him read it with impartiality and attention, and I doubt not but he will close it, with a full conviction of its superior excellence, and enriched in his mind with some universal

rule of religious wisdom, which, without burthening his memory, he may carry in his bosom into the haunts of the world, and apply without difficulty to the business of life.

Upon one of these rules it is my present intention to discourse. "Cease to do evil, learn to do well," says the prophet, in the name of the Lord, to the children of Israel his people. The exhortation stands amidst a variety of others; but it is so plain that it requires no explanation, and so general in reference, that it may be applied, with equal force and justice, to every age and generation upon earth. Our labour, therefore, will be confined to the mere object of enlarging upon its simplicity, and pointing out its importance. It consists, then, it is evident, of two distinct precepts; the first of which enjoins an abstinence from what is evil, the second a pursuit of what is good; and this is the general language both of reason and revelation, when speaking of what is required to make the moral creature acceptable in the sight of his Creator. Flee from sin and follow virtue. Who does not acknowledge in that sentence the common voice of conscience and of natural religion? "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously,

Who does

and godly in this present world."* not remember in these words, the similar, but more awful declarations of the minister and the Gospel of Jesus Christ? "To cease to do evil, and learn to do well"-that these are things which God and duty demand at the hands of every one, will therefore admit of no dispute, and stands not in need of any further proof. But the propriety of these duties is not the only thing which may be gathered from the words of the text. By the nearness and order in which the two commandments there follow each other, are marked the intimate and inseparable union and connexion which the mind of the prophet considered as subsisting between them; and we are thus led to examine further into the necessity of ceasing to do evil in order that we may learn to do well; the influence which ceasing to do evil has in the preparation and encouragement of the mind to do well: and the absolute and unalterable necessity of both, in order to secure the end of hope, the salvation of our souls.

"Cease to do evil." This is the first and great commandment of Religion to her children, of the Almighty to those who are the seekers of a blessed immortality. It might seem almost needless to insist upon a principle of duty at once *Titus ii. 12.