troubled, and your spirits overwhelmed, by a sense of the many imperfections and inconsistencies, which mark your course?-See, in the first place, whether they do not arise from some unmortified lust, some unchastised passion. And then do not sit down in inactive despair, saying, the enemy hath persecuted my soul, he hath smitten my life down to the ground 1;"-" will the Lord cast me off for ever, and will he be no more entreated'?"—do not, I say, fall into a train of idle complainings.-It is thine own infirmity.-Seek out the sin that is besetting you, and implore the grace of God, that you may be empowered to cast it out. Pray, "Lord, help thou

mine unbelief."

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And, in the last place, although upon a candid examination you feel constrained to confess that you are "of little faith”— that the life of God is but commencing within you-despise it not, neither neglect it. It may be the seed from which shall

1 Ps. cxliii. 3.

2 Ps. lxxvii. 7.

spring, by due cultivation, an abundant harvest-the dawn which shall continue to shine more and more unto the perfect day." The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all seeds-but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof'."-If you have faith therefore, but as a grain of mustard seed now, yet cherished and cultivated by all care and diligence of your own, and nourished by the dew of God's blessing-it may increase daily more and more, till it become a tree of life-affording a defence from the heat, and a shelter from the storm.-If we are not wanting to ourselves, we may be "confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in us, us, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ "."

1 Matt. xiii. 31-33.

2 Phil. i. 6.

SERMON XI.

RELIGIOUS FIRMNESS AND CONSISTENCY.

DANIEL iii. part of ver. 16, 17, 18.

O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom

we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

IT must have been a grand and imposing spectacle which the plains of Dura exhibited, when in obedience to the mandate of him whose word was life or death, all people, nations, and languages, in the vast empire of Babylon,

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were gathered together," on the banks of the Euphrates, " unto the dedication of

the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up."-A large crowd of human beings, is a sight calculated at all times to excite feelings of interest, perhaps of awe.-What must it have done under circumstances such as those to which we are now referring!—When from the huge and gorgeous idol in the midst, the sun glanced upon countless myriads on every side-extended far as the eye could reach, consisting of every variety of complexion and costume-all assembled for the same purpose, all looking for the same appointed signal.

And now let us suppose the signal given. Let us suppose that at the same moment, from different parts of the vast plain-there arise the loud, wild notes of eastern music:--and behold! as if animated by one soul, the dense immeasurable multitude fall prostrate in adoration before the Idol God.

The whole multitude, did I say?—So indeed, it would appear at the first glance so few are the exceptions.-Besides the god, and the haughty monarch

who made the god, there are three men only who stand erect, above the abject grovelling idolaters. Now, (before examining their motives,) how firm of purpose must these men have been!-How firm of purpose to resist that strong propensity to acquiescence which is a natural feeling, when all around us are of one mind, and which is wont to become overwhelmingly powerful, when backed by the excitement of such a scene as this. The simultaneous prostration of these countless myriads would have bent, we might suppose, for a moment, the sternest principle; and we should no more expect to find three isolated individuals resisting the impulse, than to see the same number of corn-blades standing erect and motionless, while the whole field around was bowing and waving in the wind.

But if we admire their inflexibility when opposing such an influence as this, what shall we think of it, when we find that it was exhibited with the knowledge and in defiance of this fearful sentence, "And whoso falleth not down and wor