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ed to the capacities, the progress, and the existing moral and religious state of mankind.

Every preceding dispensation seems, also, to have contained some intimations of that under which we live; and, from some expressions in the Scriptures, we have strong reasons to conclude that this is ultimate, and that all, that God intends to do for mankind, in the way of supernatural interposition, he has done by Jesus Christ.

These dispensations, of the history of God's moral government, furnish subjects of sublime and grateful contemplation to angels and to men. They represent God in the fairest and most interesting of lights, when we consider that all these have been known to him from the beginning of the world, and that his parental care discovers itself in every communication which he has made since man was created.

There are many circumstances in this history, which once appeared unintelligible, but which now we more clearly understand. Such, in particular, was the rejection and consequent fortune of the Jewish nation, once the people of God, which made the apostle exclaim, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Now we perceive how indispensable it was to make the divine origin of the gospel more apparent, and what strength it continues to add to its proofs.

If there are difficulties which yet serve to exercise our humility and our study, we must not be surprised. The great apostasies in Christendom, the growth of infidelity, and the present state of the world, are all preparatory to some more glorious era in the church. The morning of

the Reformation was preceded by greater darkness, moral and intellectual, than we have since known; and it is to be hoped, that we have not reached the meridian of this day, and that we shall not be obliged to pass through another night of religious darkness before the purposes of God shall be finished. But, however this may be, we have nothing to do but to preserve minds sincerely desirous of inquiring after the truth, meekly submissive to what God has revealed, and patiently to persevere in well-doing through all the changes of the present dispensation. To us Christians this is the language of God's grace : "Go thou thy way to the end;" for, after all thy trials and disquietudes, if thou preservest thy integrity and thy faith, "thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."

SERMON X.

HEBREWS III. 12.

TAKE HEED, BRETHREN, LEST THERE BE IN ANY OF YOU AN EVIL HEART OF UNBELIEF.

BETWEEN the two propositions, that the gospel is true, and that it is false, -between the belief that it is the revelation of God, and the opinion that it is the work of men, the chasm is so vast that it is impossible there should not be some great difference in the minds or in the hearts of those men who, with similar advantages and means, can form different conclusions upon the subject. The question with respect to religion amounts, in fact, to this: Is there, or is there not, any satisfactory assurance that this life is not the termination of man's existence? Are all the hopes, the fears, and the anticipations of mankind, that there is an eternity to come, merely uncertain and delusive suggestions?

The inquiry, whether the gospel be true, involves in it the question, whether God, who has given us our mental powers, our moral sense, and our anticipations of another life, has ever interposed for the salvation of this part of his creation; or whether man has always been left, upon a subject of such importance, to the weakness of his own unassisted reason, and the corruption of his actual condition. It involves the question, whether the Jewish history, at

present the most authentic in the world, is a mere fable, and, especially, whether that wonderful event of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which so many great and good men have sacrificed their lives to authenticate, is a gross delusion and imposition. In short, by the admission or rejection of Christianity, the aspect of the world is changed. If this source of hopes, fears, comforts, restraints, reasonings, and meditations, is blotted out of the human mind, its whole character must be changed.

Undoubtedly, in a fair and uncorrupted mind the bias would be altogether in favor of religion; for it makes of man a creature so much superior to what he would be without it, it raises him so much nearer heaven, and opens to him such sublime and exhilarating views with respect to God, to himself, and to society, that we should think the world would press to receive it, and that without it man would consider himself but half enlightened. Alas! it is Thousands are busy in chasing from their minds every suggestion in its favor, and stopping their ears, lest the news of the gospel of peace should gain access to their hearts.

not so.

The object of this discourse will be to explain the sources of unbelief. I fear we shall find, that, in the language of the Apostle, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost."

In the first place, I do not hesitate to say, that the least dishonorable source of infidelity is ignorance. Many think that to differ from the vulgar is to be superior to them; and that it is a proof of having thought deeply, to be able to start objections to the most common truths. the proofs of human weakness, I know none greater than that indolence of mind, which shows itself in the disposi

But, of all

tion which is satisfied with proposing difficulties, instead of searching for truths. The truth of the gospel is a fact of which, at first, it required only the exercise of the senses, to satisfy one's self. Of course, there was no need of learning, to be a well informed Christian. But now, at this distance of time, it has become a work of superior knowledge and fairness, to understand and illustrate its true foundation, and a very superficial employment, to suggest objections, because time has already furnished them to our hands. It is no longer a test of superior sagacity, to doubt the truth of a religion which the most gifted minds have believed, relying upon great and various and impregnable proofs; though few of those, who receive it, have ever examined the whole grounds of their faith, or felt the most serious objections.

It may be remarked, without danger of contradiction, that, of those who reject the gospel, the majority are extremely ignorant of Scripture, and in this branch of necessary knowledge are very much inferior to many Christians, whom they venture to despise. Their reading has been in a different direction. Hence, all they know of the Old and New Testament is, perhaps, that there are passages in them, which are strange or unintelligible; and thus they venture to decide upon this most grand and solemn question, often without having read, much more having studied, the book which reveals the destination of the human race.

I may venture yet further to assert that few of those, who reject Christianity, possess much of the knowledge which is necessary to a thorough understanding of the Scriptures. They do not consider how unreasonable it is, to expect that books written, as many of those of the Bible were, more than two thousand years ago, and in a dead

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