corresponding writings of the Old Testament, to which, as divinely inspired, they have annexed their Apostolic sanction, they being dead yet speak; and what they speak we are bound to receive with no doubt or hesitation as the word of God. This therefore is to be regarded and reverenced by us, as the rule of faith-the test of truth-the standard, according to which the doctrines which come to us, are to be proved to be doctrines "according to godliness," or "diverse and strange."

"This is the judge that ends the strife,

Where wit and reason fail."

On this single point hangs the question between the true witnesses of God and all the world beside. Deists say, "every man's own reason and conscience are to him the rule of faith. These alone must decide what he is to believe." So they have as many rules of faith and as diverse and strange doctrines as there are diverse and opposite decisions of man's frail, erring, biassed reason. The Jews say, "Talmud or oral law, and the Mishna, or second law, together with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, are the rule of faith, all of equal authority;" and so, while the Scriptures, for these two centuries have been read in their synagogues every sabbath day, they by general consent, as their fathers did before them, have rejected him in whom those Scriptures are so manifestly fulfilled. Catholics

"the writings of the fathers, and the decrees of the popes and councils, have equal authority with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The holy Scriptures do not contain all that is necessary to salvation and are not sufficient, as the rule of faith. They are obscure and it is not for the common people to read them. Tradition, whether it regards matters of faith or practice is to be received as the true interpretation of the Scriptures." So, by millions they have departed from the faith, to pray to the virgin Mary, to worship images and crosses, to make confession to priests, to purchase absolution with penance or with money, to refuse meats which God has sanctified, and forbid marriage, to depend on the outward washing in baptism as conveying the inward grace, and the material bread in the Lord's Supper as giving eternal life. Thousands of Protestants so called, there are also, who while they profess to reverence the Bible, as containing the word of God, yet do not receive it, as being itself his word. "God," they say, "revealed to the prophets and apostles the great truths of religion, and left them to communicate these to mankind in their own way, with no security against the false colorings which their misconceptions put upon them." So they take it upon themselves to sit in judgment on the record: and having made all due corrections they tell us, that, according to it, there is no divinity in Christ, no personality in the Holy Ghost, no expiation for sin in the death of Jesus, no native corruption in man, no regeneration by the Spirit, no resurrection of the body, no devil, no hell, no

eternal punishment. And while these exalt their own reason as the standard by which God's word itself is to be tried, others there are of various names who exalt their own impressions, their imagined revelations, or what they call the inward witness of the Spirit, above the word of the Spirit. They care nothing for the letter of the Scriptures, the plain sense of the Bible, a reasonable exposition of its teachings, or a solemn observance of divine ordinances. They are above these carnal things. They have no need of doctrines and ordinances-no, not of the testimony of God himself as to what is truth. How then, men and brethren, shall we not be carried away with diverse and strange doctrines ? "To the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." The great principle of the reformation, the Bible is the sufficient and only rule of faith, must decide us. There is no other safeguard. There is no other standard. It is indeed true, that if you would receive your faith at the dictation of a self-created priesthood, with no thought or inquiry of your own, and if all men would do the same, then might there be one faith all over the world; but unless you are prepared to surrender the first privilege of a rational being, that of deciding for yourselves what pertains to your own highest duty and interest, you have no security against the deceivableness of unrighteousness by which a sinful world is tossed, but by taking the word of God, settled as it is forever in heaven, for your guide. And has God in very deed, in pity of our state, condescended to speak to us from heaven? Are the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments his word? Not only fraught, as the writings of good men generally are with divine truth, but themselves divine-given by inspiration of God? Then do they stand out alone among all the writings in this world. Then are they alone to be received by us as the rule of faith. "We are of God," they say who wrote them: "he that is of God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us; hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." This, then, is the first requisite to stability in the christian faith, that we take the word of God as our rule.

II. That by searching the word of God we make ourselves acquainted with the true scheme of faith. That his word may avail us, it must be known; and it were an impeachment on his wisdom-a reflection on his words to suppose him to have so given it, that we are incapable of understanding it, or must necessarily be in doubt as to the truth of our interpretation of it; or to consider the fathers, who succeeded the apostles or divines of later days, better expounders of his mind and will than were the apostles themselves whom he selected, inspired and sealed for that very purpose. Reverence no doubt is due to the opinions of the fathers, and to the teachings of our spiritual guides now

Christian ministers, the parents, the teachers whom God has ordained to instruct us in his word; but that our faith and hope may be in God, we must see for ourselves that what they teach is in truth the word of God. Helpers of our faith, we need as of every other concern temporal and spiritual; but then are mortal men our best helpers, when most they hide themselves behind the effulgency of those divine glories which they make to shine out before us. It was the part of a noble mind in the Jews of Berea, to listen to the accredited teachers of the Gospel, with all readiness of mind, and, having done this, to search the Scriptures to see if these things were so. Had they not done both these, they had not believed. So must we do, would we not be carried about with wind of doctrine; would we have settled opinions in religion, and opinions which we shall know are justified by the truth of God, and will stand confirmed in the light of eternity.

every

I have said we must become acquainted with the true scheme of faith. There is a scheme of faith-a system of doctrine-a body of truth-whose parts are mutually dependent and inseparably connected, and by the knowledge of which, therefore, the truth of the whole and of every part, commends itself with convincing power to the mind. It is, as I said before, essentially a scheme of grace. It supposes mankind, with no distinction, to be naturally fallen and perishing-deserving of eternal death and exposed to it -under the power of sin, and beyond all reasonable hope of selfrecovery-dependent therefore on the grace of God, from the first to the last, for the blessings of salvation. That grace, as flowing forth to believers through the atonement of Christ, and by the quickening and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit-the grace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the great work of redemption, it is the peculiar glory of the Gospel to reveal. These doctrines are so wrought into every part of the scriptures, are so dependent on each other, and so united in one harmonious scheme, and withal they so commend themselves to every man's conscience that it is not easy for any one who has once seen them as they stand in the book of God, ever afterwards to disbelieve them, or hearken for a moment to doctrines, diverse and plausible as they may be, which are foreign to them. There are individuals, I know, who have fallen away from a good confession into one error after another, and some of them have landed in downright infidelity; but how many of them, when they witnessed that confession, blindly assented to forms of doctrine which they had been taught, without ever truly understanding and believing the doctrines themselves, which those forms were intended to express, another day will show. Some have said that they always stumbled at those doctrines-that they never understood or heartily believed them, and that their open renunciation of them was only a declaration of the secret misgivings which they had long before entertained

and therefore we presume that it is so with others, who, in like manner, have departed from the faith. This at least is evident, that would we be rooted and grounded in the faith, it is requisite, that having taken the word of God for our rule of faith, we seek an intimate acquaintance with the scheme of faith which it reveals.

III. It is above all things necessary, that by a humble submision of ourselves to the word of God, we have the true spirit of faith. On all subjects our impressions depend much on the state of mind in which those subjects are presented to us. It is more especially so with the great truths of the Gospel, laying their demands,as they do, upon the conscience and the heart, and requiring the unqualified submission of ourselves to the authority and grace of God. Here is the root of all the scepticism and unbelief -the diverse and strange doctrines abroad in the world--the contrariety of the Gospel to the pride, the self-will, the self-reliance, and the selfish and wordly desires of the heart; and this it is, which, being indulged in resistance of the truth, provokes an offended God, at last to abandon men to their own deceivings; because they have not the love of the truth that they might be saved but have pleasure in unrighteousness, God give them up to strong delusions to believe a lie. This consequently, it is, which makes needful the grace of the Holy Spirit to all true knowledge and effectual belief of the Gospel; and it is the experience and fruit of this grace in which consists that spirit of faith-that humbleness of mind,and submission to the teaching of divine wisdom and the control of the divine will, to which so many promises of establishment are given, and for which accordingly we should ever pray. This is that "spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God," of which Paul speaks, "the eyes of our understanding being enlightened that we may know what is the hope of our calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints;" that "anointing," of which another apostle writes, which believers "have received, and which abideth in them," so that they have "no need that any man teach them, but as the same anointing teacheth them all things, and is truth and is no lie, and even as it hath taught them, they shall abide in him;" that "grace," by which in immediate sequence of the text, and in explanation of it, it is said to be "good that the heart be established," a principle of grace, leading us to repose ourselves firmly on the doctrines of grace. So, my brethren, will you not be carried about with diverse and strange doctrines.

IV. Let me now suggest a few thoughts concerning the importance of this establishment in the faith.

Many zealous Christians have but a feeble sense of this. What

they desire is feeling and stir and action. As for these doctrines, they say, let us leave them to ministers and professional divineslet them dispute them out in their own way-they but little concern us. And it must be admitted that there are speculative points on religion as on all other subjects, which but little concern the majority of men, and which unhappily have been the subjects of acrimonious debate. But to say of the leading doctrines of the Gospel that they do not concern us, is to say that the Gospel itself is not our concern. For what is the Gospel? Not a code of laws, nor a system of ethics, nor a mere appeal to the imagination or the feelings. In the language of Paul,it is a mystery-the mystery of God-the mystery hidden from ages everlasting in his own bosom, but now revealed unto men. In other words, it is the revelation of the glorious plan of his wisdom and love in our redemption. It is, therefore, a scheme of doctrine-something taughtand that which as taught is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth"-that, on the knowledge of which, all right feeling and all holy obedience depends. Stability in the Christian faith is therefore no less important than stability of Christian character, since without the former the latter cannot exist. There may be sympathetic emotion there may be an excitement of religious feelings-there may be fiery zeal in the performance of religious duties where there is but little knowledge of evangelical truth; but these, having no root in themselves, founded in no enlightened principle, embodying no knowledge of those spiritual objects on which all holy affections terminate, and in view of which they are called forth, are as transient as the circumstances which gave them being.

What are those things which are the main subjects of Christian doctrine? They are the living God, our Creator, our Sovereign Disposer, our Supreme Ruler, our Final Judge. They are Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, our Mediator with God, and the work of our redemption by him. They are the glorious inheritance purchased for us by his death, offered for our acceptance, and reserved for his saints to be revealed at the last day. They are the work of the Spirit, the terms of salvation, the way of life, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and eternal rewards. And are these the subjects concerning which we can be contented to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine? They are subjects compared with which all ordinary subjects of human regard are" trifles light as air"-subjects which have engaged the eager inquiries of holy men since the world began, which the angels desire to look into; which form our hearts and determine our conduct, just in proportion as the truth concerning them is understood and believed, and which, having formed us for heaven, will exalt our triumph, and call forth our admiring praises there forever.