Let the worldling, the man of ungodliness, or pollution, or lust, scoff and scorn at the enthusiasm and fanatical heat of the Christian, when he speaks of the fact, that pleasing God he has the enjoyment of spiritual communion and fellowship with God. My brethren, we have the witness within ourselves, of the treasure which we possess in this world of that spiritual communion, which others may deride and scorn, a treasure which we would not part with for worlds. No, my brethren, we regard it as a cluster of the grapes of Eschol which have been brought into the wilderness; we regard it as a draught that is taken from the river of the water of life; we regard it as a flower that is plucked from the amaranthine bowers of Paradise; we regard it as the dawning of the very day of glory, the beginning of heaven below: and while we look at the toilsome pursuits of others over things which perish in the using, who shall refuse to pronounce

Let others stretch their arms like seas,

And grasp in all the shore;

Grant me the visits of thy grace,
And I desire no more."

Secondly; those who exist in this state, besides the enjoyments to which we have now adverted, possess also the consolations and supports of God in all times of difficulty and of danger. My brethren, we have times of affliction. That we please God does not exempt us from sorrow; "Many are the afflictions of the righteous:" "They that will live godly must suffer persecution." Often have tears fallen from your eyes; often has the darkness gathered over your steps; often has the bitterness swelled as gall in your own hearts; and yet pleasing God, my brethren, we have the confidence of adequate support, by which even those afflictions are rendered blessings in disguise. The promise was made by the Almighty to his ancient church, and it is repeated to us, "Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour." Jesus tells us, that "My grace is > sufficient for thee;" and we know "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

But, my brethren, there is one time of difficulty and danger beyond the afflictions of our temporal lives, which awaits us; I mean, the hour of death. Enoch so pleased God, that as a miracle and a marvel he did not die. He was so eminent, so firm, so signally pure and elevated in that age of corruption and darkness, that he was exempted from the ordinary allotment of mortality; he did not see death: "He was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God." We cannot, my brethren, form any remote conjecture as to the manner of the departure of that great and that eminent saint; we can only imagine, from the analogy of the cases, that his translation was similar to the departure of the prophet Elijah, who, after cleaving the waters of Jordan, in the presence of his son in the work of prophecy, ascended into heaven in a chariot with horses of fire, anticipating and typifying the ascension of the Redeemer, his body undergoing a change from what was natural to what was spiritual in its passage, so that he at once entered into the fulness of the beatific vision of God.

My brethren, "we must needs die, and be like water spilt upon the ground,

which cannot be gathered up again." We are all tending thither; many steps, my brethren, have we taken since we entered into the house of God this morning. Every beating of your heart, every thrill of your pulse, is but another, and another, and yet another, advance towards death. Since I began the sentence we are nearer to it, and so forward. In the prospect of this departure, it becomes us to remember how delightful are those exhibitions of comfort which God has provided. "This God," we are told-" This God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death." If you turn to Hebrews, ii. 14, you will there perceive this, that the work of the Saviour is connected with the conquest of death and the removal of its terrors, by which it has been in former times surrounded. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." And now look forward: the darkness of death is dispelled; the sting of death is extracted; the terrors of death are crushed; the waters of death are dried; and we have but to pass, as in a secure channel, under the guidance of Him who is the priest of the new covenant, to "an inheritance which is incorruptible, and undefiled, and which fadeth not away."

And thus are we brought to the last particular to which we would now refer you, that those who exist in the state which is now described, have the security of eternal and perfect happiness in heaven. Pleasing God has an especial connexion with the joy of God. The righteousness of Christ is to exhibit this especial feature in the great day, when the judgment shall be set, and the books shall be opened, and when we who have been accepted in the Beloved are there to stand before his throne, to be welcomed as faithful servants, who shall enter into the joy of their Lord. And mark, my brethren, what then follows: they shall be "before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them into living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." All who have pleased God in this world shall meet in the glory of God in another. Sin, sorrow, sickness, fatigue, all the elements of anxiety and woe that gather so thickly around the sphere of time, shall be extinguished and destroyed, and in the fulness of joy, and the pleasures which are for evermore, shall they be for ever with the Lord. This we affirm, is the result, of having the testimony that we have pleased God.

And now, my hearers, let me remind you of the general outlines of the important subject to which we have referred you. The pleasing of God is not a state of existence attained by any man in a state of unrenewed and unregenerate nature; it arises only from the renovation and sovereign agency of the Holy Spirit of the Father. The character which is formed by this high state of existence comprehends faith in the divine testimony, that testimony having an especial respect to the sacrifice for sin; it comprehends obedience to the divine commands, and gratitude for the divine goodness: and all who are elevated to it have the enjoyment of nearer and intimate communion with God, possess his consolations and supports in times of difficulty and danger, and are finally to receive the perfection of happiness amidst the immortal enjoyments of heaven "For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God'

There is but one remark to which I would call your attention in concluding this address, and it is simply this-the importance, the vast and the unspeakable importance, of pleasing God. You have heard with, at least, I trust, ordinary attention the development with which Scripture has now presented you: and is not the improvement already formed in your minds, that nothing is so momentous for you as to be numbered among those who please God? This assembly is divided into two compartments—those who please God, and those who displease him. There is no neutral ground, no territory to which appertains neither one character nor the other. A great gulf spiritually separates the two, those who possess his approbation, and those who inherit his displeasure. My Christian brethren and sisters, it needs not, after the statement that has been made, that an application of a more formal nature should be made to you. But those of you

who have entered within these walls in the character of careless and unconverted persons, must be called, for a single moment, to contemplate your position alike for time and for eternity. You are estranged from the attributes which are essential to acceptance with God. You do not please God. Is this nothing, my brethren? From what privileges are you excluded! You have no intercourse with him, no protection in seasons of difficulty and danger, no prospect of the exceeding and eternal weight of glory. It is enough-you please not God; and you, therefore, have pronounced on you the sentence of banishment and exclusion from the Lord. And, oh, my brethren, when the day shall arrive, to which we have adverted, when you must stand before God for judgment, can you be content that then it shall be your character that you do not please God? What would it matter, if popular applause had wreathed around you its powerful incense? What would it matter, if poetry had told of your fame in its flowing numbers, and if music had chaunted it in its very sweetest and most harmonious song? What would it matter, if history had inscribed your exploits upon its well-nigh imperishable pages; and if monuments of brass, or adamant, or marble, had been reared to perpetuate your memory? Pleasing not God, my brethren, all these heaped together, would be but like fuel, for the flame of the final conflagration. Then, bare and naked, without a decoration, and without an ornament, and without a plea, would you stand before the bar of the Eternal, with this one sad and fatal consciousness-God is angry! God is angry! Then thunders will roar, then lightnings will flash, then storms and tempests will rend and resound, and then the universe will be but one scene of dark and fearful convulsion; amid the agonizings of which, fiends will grasp and remove you from the presence of God, and from the glory of his Father, into realms where he has forgotten to be gracious.

My friends, whether after that developement of character which has been rendered, whether after the prospects of judgment which have been appointed, it can be the resolution of any to depart from this house of God, yet beneath the frown of his displeasure I know not. I do trust that a mightier spirit than the instrumentality which has come from the lips of the preacher, is breathing and working among you; and that not a few of those who entered, having around them the darkness of the curse, shall depart having around them the dawn of light, the favour of immortal day. Brethren, one and all, let this be our ambition not to please the rich or the great, or the mighty-not to please the multiplied forms of human society in any form of combination or existence whatsoever; but to please God. And let us aspire, that when our spirits shall have departed to those worlds, where we shall know the reality of their hap

piness who have held this character, devout men shall carry our dust to the tomb, making great lamentations over us, and then wiping away the tears of nature's sorrow, exult in the memory of the excellence and the piety which we nave left, and departing to chisel on the monument that covers our remains— "Before”—not he was translated-“ Before he died, he had this testimony, that ne pleased God." And oh, my brethren, may that God grant, that when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised to judgment, as those who have pleased him we shall stand at his right hand, to be welcomed, and to be blessed for ever and ever.

CHARACTER OF SAUL OF TARSUS CONFIRMATORY OF
CHRISTIANITY.

THE history of Saul of Tarsus has often been cited with nappy success m confirmation of Christianity. Part of the evidence which it supplies is common to other narratives of conversion; but a greater part is of a character quite distinct. As, in all, it is competent to set over against each other mistake and deception, so we might in this show the impossibility of such a mind being seduced into error or tempted to imposture. If the first, then the most masculine mind, the most powerful counter-impression, a judgment most cautious in its use of evidence, a sobriety most jealous over each exercise of imagination, proofs always abundant and always augmenting, sign and suasion, are no presumptions of truth, no means of certainty. The Gospel is either unsusceptible of support from reasoning, or our intellect is unfitted to weigh that reasoning. If the second, we must transform the human being, and conceive of selfishness covetous of sacrifice, ambition intent upon dishonour, pleasure wrapt in auste rity, hypocrisy sighing for death.

His accession to the Christian side derives much of its singularity from his hostility-hostility neither ordinary nor in the least degree controlled. It could only, at any time, have been exasperated into fiercer fury by the suggestion that he should soon be won to the number of the proselytes and defenders already enlisted. Had augur or soothsayer hazarded the prediction, no improbabilities could have occurred to the hearer more blind and excessive.

In

If any name sounded dreadful in the ear of the first Christian, it was that of "the young man who kept the raiment of the first martyr, Stephen." That name was a brand of cruelty, it was a voice of blood. It passed forth as an omen, as when nations have beheld the meteor-sword flashing above them. vain do we search for any redeeming virtue, any exculpating circumstance, in his character and history. The ordinary palliatives of youth, temperament, inexperience, supply the actual aggravation. A rank maturity of evil contrasts itself to his youth, a phlegmatic steadiness of malignity does violence to his temperament, and an inventive redundance of aggressions more than makes up for the disadvantages of inexperience. He settles into a cool and gloating, ferocity, he revolves new and more dire schemes of persecution. He can revel in the carnage of a promiscuous massacre with an unshrinking eye and unrelenting heart. He never seems warmed by a generous enthusiasm. There is none of chat fine sentiment, that moral poetry, which sometimes has retrieved the sallies of an extravagant zeal. His acquittal of dishonesty is the condemnation of his cruelty

And if any conversion appeared placed beyond the limit of hope and all reasonable expectation, if any could be termed "too hard for God," or lying within those moral impossibilities which he allows because they establish his perfection of nature and rule of will, who would have wavered to pronounce that it was this? Sooner might it have been surmised that Caiphas would have