come to Christ, except the Father draw him," they deprive of all meaning his tender remonstrance, "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." Those, on the contrary, who cannot believe that the invitations of the Gospel are a mockery-that those commands, " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light;"* and those entreaties, "Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die?" + and those reproaches, "Because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded;"‡ have no more meaning, as addressed to a man dead in trespasses and sins, than if directed to the cold carcase in the churchyard, reject the converse position, and maintain that man has some power of himself to help himself, as if it were not as plainly written, "That it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy,"§ "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." At one or other of + Ezek. xxxiii. 11. + Prov. i. 24. * Eph. v. 24. John xv. 16. these conclusions I believe we must arrive, by every train of consistent argument. But why should man argue when God has spoken?— why should finite reason, darkened by the fall, wonder at its own incapacity to comprehend what God has said? He has declared both these things; and difficult as they are to reconcile in the abstract, they have never presented any practical difficulty to an honest mind. Every unsilenced conscience testifies of their truth; every man born anew of the Spirit, who has turned from vanities to serve the living God, knows that he did not do it, and could not have done it, for himself; and every man that continues in sin, in defiance of the threats and promises of the gospel, knows that he does it wilfully and of his own ungodly preference; and both these truths will be testified to in heaven and hell to all eternity—in one, to the glory of God, and to the gratitude of the freely saved; in the other, to the endless misery of the self-destroyed. Man, then, is incapable as a rational being of living without an object; and he is responsible as a moral being for choosing well among the many objects that are set before him. But what do men live for? Some seem to live for nothing but to sin, and to accumulate upon themselves the debt of almighty vengeance, as if life were not long enough, without unnatural efforts, to earn eternal misery. They long for the morning to renew their work— they go abroad to find out where iniquity is doing they return to pursue it in their secret chambers-they lie down at night full of contrivings how to sin to-morrow. Miserable slaves! they have indeed chosen an object, and, hardened as they are, they dare not accuse their Maker of their choice. If they cannot help it now, they remember when they could; they are less deceived than many-they know their present wretchedness, and often, I believe, anticipate the issue. But all are not alike; there are men of this world very different from these, and yet I see not that they are any more like Christ. There are those whose only object in existence seems to be to do no harm. Entrusted all with some talents, most of them with many, they feel no responsibility but to keep them safe and innoxious; they preserve their health by temperance, their property by prudence, and their character by propriety of conduct, and no man lays any thing to their charge. Harmlessness makes them objects of the world's indulgence; not of its affection, for they do nothing to obtain it. They are not known to despise God's laws, neither are they seen to give him honour. They are not heard to deny Christ, nor to confess Him before men. What shall it be said these live for, with their harmless pleasures and their selfish pains? It might be for society; but then they lose their purpose the world itself gains nothing by them, and would not miss them if they ceased to live. All they pretend to, is to do no harm. What an object for an immortal soul to choose, and yet they make some boast of it! Was it for such a purpose God the Father created and endowed them? Do such pretend to any likeness to the Son of God? There is a portrait that resembles them now: "Wherein have we robbed thee ?" &c.* and when that day, the day of the manifestation of the sons of God, shall come, they will be found in the likeness of him who said to his Lord, "There, thou hast that is thine." Need I name those whose only object in the world is to possess it? If they are not many, they are enough for plain sense to wonder at. These are they who join house to house, and field to field, but neither dwell in their houses, nor reap the harvest of their fields, the whole object of their existence being to accumulate wealth and honours, for years they do not live to see, and children that die before them. These have a likeness too, sketched by the pencil of Him, whom, I suppose, they do not pretend to resemble-" Thou fool, this night!" And there are those, whose only object in existence is to enjoy it; and they are the greater part of all that dwell upon the * Mal. iii. 8. |