is the grand fundamental principle. "Now the just shall live by faith." "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Wherever this principle of faith is engrafted in the mind, and is productive of these fruits in the character and in the life, the principle of holy love and religious benevolence will be found equally operating. Having by faith obtained justification, pardon, and acceptance with God, through the righteousness of another, I shall love the God who saved me, love the Redeemer who died for me, love the children of God's family who are partakers with me in the inestimable benefits of redemption; I shall love all mankind for the sake of Him who has assumed that nature into union with his own, and has taken the pattern of my humanity to the throne of the Godhead. Wherever I discern a fragment of human nature, I trace that nature in some degree of relationship to the Son of God, and for the sake of the divine Redeemer I love those whose nature he wears. And thus you see the comprehensive principle of Christian love will embrace all, according to the relative degree and peculiar claim they may have upon us; all will be embraced in one fervent grasp of Christian charity: "Faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." And I beg to say, that this meets that which is commanded of God; and that commandment is the rule of all duty: for this is the commandment of God, that we believe on his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

In closing this subject, in the first place, it offers hope to the most hopeless; I say hope to the most hopeless, because we have discovered that the grace of God is the spring and the source of man's salvation. My dear fellow sinners, if it depended upon your own merit or discernment to extricate yourselves from the thraldom, and from the miry clay into which sin has plunged you, you might have remained until now; but a voice has been heard from on high—“Deliver them from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom." When there was no eye to pity, and no arm stretched out for your relief, then did the eye of God glance on your forlorn condition; then did the heart of God pity you in your distress; then from a motive of mere grace did he form that contrivance which grace has effected,which grace supplies, and which, when carried into active detail, grace will complete. Here then is the door of hope which the Gospel opens for you; and though you may have been among the vilest of mankind, though you may have been numbered among blasphemers and persecutors and revilers, yea, though among the scum and the offscouring of all things; yet, let me tell you, there is no depth of misery from which God's grace cannot deliver you, and there is no height of sanctity and perfection to which God's grace cannot lift you: thou hast fallen by thine iniquities, but God thine helper is great. Therefore let none despair; let none say "I have no hope." "Turn ye to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope; for to-day I declare unto you I will render to you double for all your sins;" "Where sin did abound grace shall much more abound;" "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

But while this subject excludes despair, it does not encourage presumption. If there are any who should be disposed to abuse this subject, and to say, “Let us continue in sin that grace may abound;" if there are any here who shall dare to deal in the unwarrantable language which we sometimes hear, and with infinite pain, "The greater a man's sins, and the more flagitious his enormities, the greater will be God's glory in saving him;" let me tell him the Scripture knows

nothing of a doctrine like that. There is an exhibition of God's free and undeserved, and unsolicited favour to the chief of sinners, that none may despair; but if any sinner thinks in his evil heart that he will add iniquity to iniquity, in order that thus the grace of God may be more magnified in his salvation, that man draws down redoubled guilt and condemnation on his own soul; the Lord will not bless that man, for how shall we escape if we neglect, if we abuse, so great a salvation?

Secondly, let us examine, pointedly and seriously, whether we know any thing of the grace of God which we have seen exemplified in so remarkable and transcendant a degree in the conversion of the Apostle Paul. Has this grace reached your heart? Has it transformed your character? Has it made you a new creature in Christ? Can you say that old things have passed away, and that all things have become new? To what does the grace of God form you, as to your character, demeanour, spirit, and conduct? Is it "with faith and love in Christ Jesus?" Dost thou believe on the Son of God? And has the faith which you profess opened your heart in sentiments of kindness, generosity, compassion, sympathy, and affection towards your fellow creatures? If you could remove mountains, if you suffered martyrdom, without this divine charity, you are nothing more than sounding brass or tinkling cymbals. Oh Lord, let me not be deceived on a question of so great solemnity. Let me not be given up to think or to preach lightly on the subject of the grace of God. May I have its deep and powerful and transforming influence "with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus!"

Thirdly, what gratitude do we owe for the manifestation of this grace for the revelation of it to our sinful world. If the sun could be extinguished and blotted out from yonder heavens, it would be a less calamity inflicted on the natural world than if the doctrines of grace were banished from the Christian system. They are the only principles upon which we can live-the only principles upon which we can die. "A sinner saved by grace!" It is the highest stile to which we can aspire. God be praised if we have any hope of interest in his mercy, and any prospect, arising through the merit and sacrifice of his Son, of the perfection and blessedness of a glorious immortality.

Let us close therefore by considering the animating and exhilarating prospect which the grace of God opens beyond the grave. Here we know something of those proofs and fruits of divine grace to which our attention has been directed; and there is another and a brighter and a better world where the grace of God will be found to be "exceeding abundant" in the rewards which he has to bestow and the immunities and felicities to which he can advance all who are

the objects of his grace. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God has prepared for them that love him." Behold heaven open to your view as the throne of God and of the Lamb. See the innumerable company of angels. Listen to the harp of the blessed, the melody of the songs of the redeemed. Think of a state of perfect knowledge, a state of perfect purity, a state of perfect enjoyment, a state which will exclude the possibility of a contact of moral impurity; sin and the plenary evil of it completely abolished: and then imagine yourselves to be the inheritors, the partakers of this blessedness, and remember that you owe it, and will owe it, entirely to the grace of God. Will you not then feel that it has

been 66 exceeding abundant" in having raised you from a state of misery and associated you among the principalities and the powers in heavenly places, and with the whole multitude of the redeemed who shall be your companions in the service and blessedness of heaven for ever. Then will one song employ the whole assembled throng, while they cast their crowns before the throne of God and of the Lamb, saying, "Grace, grace, unto it." May you all bear a part in that ascription of praise through the merits and intercessions of the Redeemer!

THE DEATH OF STATESMEN.

REV. J. BENNETT, d. d.

MARLBOROUGH CHAPEL, OLD KENT ROAD*, AUGUST 26 1827.

"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the Counsellor, and the eloquent Orator."-ISAIAH, iii. 1, 3.

WHEN you are called, my dear hearers, to guard against a worldly mind, does it imply you are to take no notice of what is passing in the world? that you are blind, deaf, and insensible to mortal affairs? Is this possible, unless, as the Apostle says, "we would go out of the world?" for while we are in it, objects strike our eyes and our ears, and our hearts too. And is it possible, is it desirable, would it be religious, to have a heart of stone? Does not religion take away such a heart, and give in its place a heart of flesh-tender, warm, lovely, generous, full of noble sensibilities? The Christian is not built on the ruins of the man, the brother, the neighbour, the patriot, the philanthropist. No, my dear hearers, we have never so tender, so generous, or so extensive sensibilities, as when the grace of God makes us new creatures. This only is implied in the charge to guard against a worldly mind: where others see worldly revolutions you should see divine dispensations: your citizenship being on high, you should see Him who is invisible, riding on the storm and managing the whirlwind, and making all things work together for the good of his Church. Therefore God reproaches some with their insensibility, when it is said, "When the hand is lifted up they will not see: but they shall see and be ashamed at the envy of the people;" and while the great and the mighty fall, and “the Lord of Hosts doth take away from Jerusalem and Judah the stay and the staff," let us behold the works of God, and learn heavenly wisdom.

First, then, my dear hearers, learn from the late mournful event in our country-the death of a great statesman at the head of the government-learn THE WEIGHT OF GOVERNMENT IN A FALLEN WORLD. For when the mightiest minds that our country has produced-a Fox, a Pitt, a Liverpool, a Canning, one after another taking the weight of government upon them, and dropping under its weight into the arms of death; can we avoid thinking of the mighty mass of care that has pressed them down? Would it not be affectation and obstinacy to say, It is mere sequence and not consequence, it has no relation to cause and effect? Were you to see a vast load laid on the shoulders of many strong men successively, and were you to see them drop one after another, till at last the load was lying on the ground waiting for some one to take it up, would you not say, How heavy it must be? And what else do we now see, but the great weight of government lying on the ground for some mighty mind, some * Funeral Sermon for the Right Honourable George Canning.

Herculean shoulders strong enough to bear it? Let us remember that in ordinary times, when we expect that success is the natural order of things, we know not how many heads have ached that ours might be at ease, and how many breasts have been agitated that ours might be calm. We wake in the morning, having passed a quiet night; and you may say it is natural for the night to be quiet but we forget that the watchmen watched that we might sleep. When troublous times come then we are taught this wisdom, for we then discover that quietness, and calm, and ease, are not so natural in a fallen world as we imagine. On the contrary, man having fallen from God, he has perverted the moral order of the universe; and when he is deranging his relation toward his Creator, can we expect any thing but derangement with his fellow-creatures? When the great tables of the law were broken at the foot of Mount Sinai, it was not only that table which said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," but also, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," that was dashed in pieces. Were a band of robbers to conspire together to set the government at defiance, however harmoniously they might seem to move, every wise man would say, Wait a little, and they will quarrel among themselves, and a wise government will soon crush them all. And when we have fallen from our great Creator, can you wonder that it is a mighty task to manage fallen creatures? For the very selfishness which reigns in all parties, the governed and the governing, would be avoided, were they wisely loving their neighbours as themselves. Lines drawn from the circumference to one common centre, will not cross or disturb each other; but now that every one has a mighty self of his own, now that self is his god, and his all, all is thrown into confusion in the government. They that are in power can hardly be supposed to be pure in their motives; they are men, and are we pure? Among the governed there are unreasonable expectations excited: they look for from man what God alone can do; and they lay to their charge the badness of the seasons; and because the weather is too wet, or too dry, they will pour on the governors blame for the variations in the very elements. And when we behold this discord, we may conceive how hard it must be to bear the weight of the toil, and to manage such a mass. And there is another cause of difficulty in the management of the state, which must never be lost sight of; for since the rise of popery, subsequent to the professed conversion of Constantine, the governors of the world have not been content with governing it alone, but they must govern the Church also, the soul as well as the body. Religion must be taken on their shoulders; though I know not the shoulders but of One, and he more than mortal man, that is able to bear the vast weight of the eternal interests of the souls of men. Hence the cares of government have doubled, and trebled, and multiplied beyond calculation, and who can wonder that the weight of this mass should crush the Atlas that attempts to carry two worlds?

Secondly, we are taught this evening, by the event we attempt to improve, not only the weight of the burden, but THE WEAKNESS OF THE SHOULDERS OF MORTAL MEN. However mighty his shoulders may be, he must be a bold man that would venture to take up a burden that has crushed so many: and yet there are many that will venture on it; for there are those who delight in danger, who sport with difficulties, and who delight in doing what no one else can do. And it is well for society that there are men of moral courage; not merely the physical and animal courage of the bull-dog, which will rush fearlessly into danger;