a Christian community of men who have outlived opportunities of repentance, and who present to higher orders of intelligence the terrible spectacle of creatures doomed before they die, forsaken of God even whilst they yet stand upon the scene of probation; and God may not withdraw from these men the means of grace; on the contrary, he may double, as he did with the Jews, all their spiritual advantages: Christ still comes to them-but he comes for judgment only, that the judicial blindness may be made more inveterate. As God still suffers his sun to arise on them and his rain to descend, he may continue and even increase their every moral privilege. Men with whom his Spirit no longer strives, on whom therefore, the messages of the Bible can only fall as waters upon the rock; these may come regularly to our churches, and hear sermon upon sermon, and present themselves to all the engines of ministerial attack. There may

σε

be nothing accidental in this-this may be what God actually ordains and appoints; God may determine that the gospel which has been often heard in vain shall continue to be heard, and that, too, for the very purpose of increasing condemnation; and whensoever such case occurs, Christ comes in order that, for the very intent that, "they which see might be made blind." Awful thing to think-but alas! only too possible-that there may be some amongst yourselves who have attended, year after year, on the ministration of the word, but who still continue blinded by the god of this world, who may now be suffered to remain under the preaching of the gospel for purposes, not so much of mercy, but of judgment! There may be even in this congregation some before whom the method of salvation has been repeatedly and faithfully placed, who have been admonished times. without number to consider their ways, warned by the terrors of hell, and invited by the happiness of heaven, to "seek the Lord while he may be found," and who have continued indifferent under all this agency, boasting perhaps their knowledge, and feeling not their want of any spiritual illumination. And it is quite possible that punishment may already have commenced on these men; it is quite possible that God has determined in just judgment on their protracted impenitence to leave them to themselves, and thus hath he passed the sentence of which that at the last judgment shall be only the echo. What is the sentence? What is the punishment? Oh! it may be that the doom of these men is merely that they shall continue to hear the gospel preached, and preached with increased fervency and fulness; that they shall fill their accustomed places in the sanctuary, and add every week to that amount of abused privilege which is to be throughout eternity a millstone round the neck-for it puts more blindness into the eye, and therefore more darkness into the everlasting portion, to hear faithful sermons, but remain unconverted; the more zealous a ministry, the better fitted is it to work into greater apathy, and therefore seal for fiercer vengeance those whom it fails to incite to contrition. Thus may their very pastor be the employed engine in effecting the heightened condemnation of some of their pumber.

The individuals whose case we have described-if such there be amongst us-will be present on successive occasions when we shall delineate the offices of a Mediator, when we shall strive to lead our hearers to the scenes of crucifixion and resurrection, when, with all the power and persuasiveness which God may enable us to use, we shall set forth equally the promises and the threatenings of the gospel; but they may be present-we almost tremble to say it-only to their injury Christ will come for judgment, not indeed for final judgment, and with fire and cloud, but with a judicial infliction, that "they which see might be made blind." Yes; it may be so. As the gospel is "a savour of life unto life," it is also, says St. Paul, a savour of death unto death." We thank God we cannot fix on such cases, we thank God that we cannot single out individuals with whom a ministry may be used for so direful a purpose? The bare possibility of there being amongst you one such instance is almost enough to tempt a minister to abandon his office, or discharge it unfaithfully, that he may not be instru mental in heaping woe on a lost spirit; and it is only that merciful arrange,

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ment by which God conceals from us the spiritual condition of our fellowmen, conceals it, at least, in such a measure that we are bound to judge nothing till the Lord come, which enables us to carry on our work without tremendous violence to natural feelings. How could I do otherwise than tremble-how be otherwise than almost appalled into silence, if whenever I ascended this pulpit to make a fresh display of the Redeemer, I knew to a certainty that there were men before me with the seared conscience and the iron heart, men so obstinate in their resolve to put from them the offer of eternal life, that I must feel that if the Redeemer himself were to enter our assembly, the Redeemer who died to deliver them, the Redeemer who would. have interceded for them, he could only say of them, "For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind "

II. But we have said enough to prove to you with reference both to the Jews and to ourselves, that there might be such a decree or determination of God as to vindicate to the letter the words under review. We have given the reasons for believing that with respect to the Jews it actually was ordained, and that with respect to some amongst ourselves it may be ordained, that the gospel of Christ should be nothing but an engine through which is wrought out an aggravated condemnation. And now the question which presses is, whether allowing God to have made such a decree, or passed such a determination, there be anything in the proceeding which is at variance, with the known attributes of his nature? We are aware that there is ordinarily a strong repugnance to the opinion that God in any sense or degree predestines man's destruction. It is a repugnance in which we most thoroughly share. We believe that in the largest and most unequivocal sense of the words, God "willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live." We could never see how there can be any honesty in the proffers of Scripture-proffers on which no i limit is set, but which address themselves equally to every child of man- -if all the while there were an eternal immutable decree consigning to every lasting destruction, with no possibility of escape, many of those to whom life is so graciously offered. We have always felt, we have always preached that the doctrine of reprobation, the doctrine which makes God to have decreed that certain men should perish, is opposed to the whole tenor of the Bible, and that it would be impossible on any such principles as those on which the last judgment is said to proceed, to vindicate the condemna- tion of any of our race, unless it can be shown that they might have been saved, and therefore at the least they were not predestined to perish. Let me say, in passing, that I do not care what your notions on God's election or predestination may be, you have at least no right to bring them into the business and process of man's salvation. This was the view of a man who quite held the doctrine of predestination as it is generally understood; I mean, the late Dr. Chalmers. Last Sunday I was reading the following words in one of his letters :-"While quite assured of the doctrine, I feel quite assured that it leaves all the incitements, and all the obligations, and the whole work of practical Christianity from its commencement to its consummation precisely where it found them. Our business surely is not with the decrees whereof we know nothing, but with the incessant declarations which are sounded in our ears, with the word that is nigh unto us; with God, not in the act of ordaining millions of centuries back, but with God in

the act of urgent, honest, and kind entreaty at this very moment. Let us therefore leave the secret things which belong unto God where they ought to be left, and proceed to those revealed things which belong to us and to our children." on

And I do not admit that in explaining our text we have assumed or acknowledged any such predestination as to keep back the most timid from not apprehending God's purpose. Have we in our foregoing explanation of how Christ may

we supposed God,me for judgment, and inflict judicial blindness-have

do what the doctrine of reprobation represents him as doing, that is, appointing and ordaining certain individuals to destruction? We deny it altogether. We have supposed, we have argued, that after long striving with men, after continued and ineffectual efforts to induce them to accept the mercy offered through Christ, God may resolve, as a punishment of their wilful obduracy to prolong, and even increase their spiritual advantages for the very purpose of suffering them to aggravate their own condemnation. This is the sum of what we have advanced; and more than this cannot fairly be deduced from the history of the Jews. The Jews had abused and despised their mercies till they were justly given over to a reprobate mind; and then it was in judgment upon them that they heard the gospel preached by him who "spake as never man spake." It was their punishment, a punishment thoroughly deserved by their desperate depravity, that Jesus came amongst them with all the symbols of Divinity, and by bringing them greater light, made their moral darkness all the more disastrous. But there is nothing here of an unconditional decree appointing the Jews to perish. This is only a decree made after long efforts to reclaim them, and in consequence of their rooted aversion to righteousness-only a decree that they should be left to complete their own destruction through the means assigned for their deliverance. In like manner, if it be true of any in the present day, that henceforwards Jesus comes to them only for judgment, to seal them in blindness, it is not that from the first their perdition had been decreed; it is only that they have grieved and wearied out the Spirit of God, and terminated that day of grace every moment of which salvation lay within their reach. What is there in this which can be pronounced inconsistent with any attribute of the Creator? Will you declare it unjust in God to allow the gospel to become deadly to those who have perverted it against its genuine tendency into the savour of death? What can even better become his majesty and his goodness, than that as "all things work together for good to those that love him," he should so let all things work for the hurt of those that hate him with an invincible hatred, and bear towards him a disaffected and implacable mind? "Understand, therefore, O sinner,"-such is the explanation

of an old divine "understand how much better it is to avoid the stroke of Divine justice than to accuse it." "God will be found true, though every man a liar," that he may be "just when he speaks, and clear when he judgeth."

We have shown you by a careful examination of the case to which our text originally referred, that Christ does not come for judgment to give judicial blindness until we have so withstood the means of grace that vengeance overtakes us as invincibly hardened. If the decree at length go forth against us, our own obstinacy has prepared it, our own wickedness has graven it. There is a period of every man's life during which there is no such decree; there is a period during which Christ comes that the blind may be

made to see, and not that they who see may be made blind. It is a period of sufficient length, and presenting sufficient opportunities. In many cases this period may only terminate with life; in others it may be contained within narrower limits; but in all its length is enough, as long as there is hope, yea, possibility of our repentance. If, indeed, we suffer it to elapse, our own destruction may be said to be ordained or appointed by God, though even then we are sorrowed over and bewailed by the Saviour. Witness the burning tears which he wept over Jerusalem, and the thrilling words which brake from him in the midst of his agony. There had been a day during which Jerusalem might have known the things which belonged to her peace; but the day was past; those things were now hid from her eyes, and therefore might it be said that the decree for her destruction had been issued: nevertheless she had herself written the decree. He who could sorrow, though he could not sin, wept over a misery which was self-wrought, and yet could not be averted. Hence the man who perishes is himself the author of the decree which appoints him to perdition. He refuses to rise through Him who is the "resurrection and the life;" he refuses to see through Him who hath "brought life and immortality to light ;" and this refusal continued till it would be weakness, and not love, to attempt more for his conversionthis refusal turns the means of deliverance into a means of destruction; so that the proffer of light but brings him darkness. And then we hear of a man's being elected to death, as though he died through God's election ! Oh! away with the thought! If destroyed, you must destroy yourself. If chosen to everlasting misery, the choice is altogether, exclusively your own. We wish this impressed on every man who hears us. Shielding yourselves in your sins under the doctrine of election is the vainest of the delusions which Satan has palmed upon the world. It is an idle, yea, it is an impious attempt to make all the blame God's, whilst all the misery is your own. But we will not believe that any one of you has outlived his day of grace. But is not the sun declining? Are not the shadows lengthening? What sand is there left in the hour-glass of life? What sand is there left in the hourglass of grace? I beseech you as though I were a dying man, whose voice you would never hear again, trifle not with the salvation proposed by the gospel. It may be that some have already trifled till salvation is out of reach. No, no! we said we would not believe this. Anything rather than this. Christ is not yet come for judgment; and therefore we will still beseech you not to trifle with salvation, not to trifle, for however we may believe that it is not yet too late, we dare not doubt that with many there are only weeks, perhaps only hours, perhaps only minutes, still left. Oh! think that possible! only minutes remain for securing immortality; and if these pass by unimproved, there remains the blackness of darkness for ever!

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THE TEACHING OF ANGELS BY THE CHURCH.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON TUESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 12, 1856,
BY THE REV. HENRY MELVILL, B.D.

(Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty,)

AT ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH, LOTHBURY.

"To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God."-Ephesians iii. 10.

WITH a restless, and for the most part a fruitless curiosity, man searches into the world of spirit, longing to catch some passing notices, which may lay open its structure and its tenantry. Conscious as we are of an intimate and indissoluble connection with the unseen state, we have naturally a great desire to know and realize something of the stirring concerns which are going on around us. We may believe that although to our eyes there be an impalpable veil shrouding the occupations of angel and spirit, yet that no such covering hides us from them, but that, on the contrary, the scene of our present being is looked upon and traversed by multiform ranks of higher intelligence. There are intimations scattered up and down the pages of Scripture, which would lead us necessarily to believe, that keen sympathy with the affairs of this lower creation is felt in the most distant parts of the universe; that the earth on which we dwell serves as a stage, whereon are enacted spectacles that fix the regards of cherubim and seraphim. In one sense we cannot form too mean an opinion of our race; in another we may degrade it below its due station in the rank of being. We are creatures who have fallen away from original innocence, and we possess no inherent capacity to retrieve what sin hath forfeited, and on these accounts we must be described by terms which mark the extremity of wretchedness; but then we are also creatures into whose nature the very Godhead hath entered, and the objects of so vast an interposition can hold none but a dignified place in creation. We cannot be beings of such utter insignificance, as we must otherwise have supposed, seeing that Deity has stooped down on our behalf, and assumed our likeness for the express purpose of raising us to his own. And when, moreover, you read that angels themselves, however glorious and ineffable their nature, are but "ministering spirits sent forth to" wait on "the heirs of salvation," and that so intense is the concern which they feel in the well-being of mankind, that they rejoice with a thrilling gladness over every repentant sinner, we cherish no arrogant pretensions if we hold up our race as occupying an illustrious station in the successive ranks of God's rational creatures. And our text is one of the most remarkable of those intimations, which lead to the belief, that this earth, in place of being detached from other portions of creation, is a scene for the development of God's attributes, and centres on itself the eager regards of the superior orders of spiritual agency. We leave it to the philosopher to use this earth as the