safe principles, and the only principles which are so; and conduct ourselves steadfastly according to the rule thus chosen, the difficulties which remain in religion will not move or disturb us much; and will, as we proceed, become gradually less and fewer. Whereas, if we begin with objections; if all we consider about religion be its difficulties: but most especially, if we permit the suggestion of these difficulties to drive us into a practical rejection of religion itself, and to afford us, which is what we wanted, an excuse to ourselves for casting off its restraints; then the event will be, that its difficulties will multiply upon us; its light grow more and more dim, and we shall settle in the worst and most hopeless of all conditions, the last condition, I will venture to say, in which any man living would wish his Son, or any one whom he loved, and for whose happiness he was anxious, to be placed, a life of confirmed vice and dissoluteness; founded in a formal renunciation of religion.

He that has to preach Christianity to persons

He must

in this state has to preach to stones. not expect to be heard, either with complacency or seriousness, or patience, or even to escape contempt and derision. Habits of thinking are fixed by habits of acting; and both too solidly fixed to be moved by human persuasion. God in his mercy, and by his providences, as well as by his spirit, can touch and soften the heart of stone. And it is seldom perhaps that without some strong, and, it may be, sudden impressions of this kind, and from this source, serious sentiments ever penetrate dispositions, hardened in the manner which we have here described.

SERMON II.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

1. JOHN. IV. 19.

We love him, because he first loved us.

RELIGION ELIGION may, and it can hardly, I think be questioned, but that it sometimes does spring from terror, from grief, from pain, from punishment, from the approach of death; and, provided it be sincere, that is, such as either actually produces, or as would produce a change of life, it is genuine religion, notwithstanding the bitterness, the violence, or if it must be so called, the baseness and unworthiness of the motive from which it proceeds. We are not to narrow the promises of God: and accept

ance

ance is promised to sincere penitence, without specifying the cause from which it originates, or confining it to one origin more than another. There are however higher and worthier and better motives, from which religion may begin in the heart; and on this account especially are they to be deemed better motives, that the religion, which issues from them, has a greater probability of being sincere. I repeat again, that sincere religion from any motive will be effectual; but there is a great deal of difference in the probability of its being sincere, according to the different cause in the mind from which it sets out.

The

purest

love of God.

motive of human action is the

There may be motives stronger and more general, but none so pure. The religion, the virtue, which owes its birth in the soul to this motive, is always genuine religion; always true virtue. Indeed, speaking of reli gion, I should call the love of God not so much the groundwork of religion, as religion itself, So far as religion is disposition, it is religion

itself.

itself. But tho' of religion it be more than the groundwork; yet being a disposition of mind, like other dispositions, it is the ground work of action. Well might our blessed Saviour preach up, as he did, the love of God. It is the source of every thing which is good in man. I do not mean that it is the only source, or that goodness can proceed from no other, but that of all principles of conduct it is the safest, the best, the truest, the highest. Perhaps it is peculiar to the Jewish and Christian dispensations, (and, if it be, it is a peculiar excellency in them) to have formally and solemnly laid down this principle, as a ground of human action. I shall not deny, that elevated notions were entertained of the Deity by some wise and excellent heathens: but even these did not, that I can find, so inculcate the love of that deity, or so propose and state it to their followers, as to make it a governing, actuating principle of life amongst them. This did Moses, or rather God by the mouth of Moses, expressly, formally, solemnly. This did Christ, adopting, repeating, ratifying what the law had already declar-·

ed;