forget to look inward: it leaves him little leisure, and less inclination, for considering the origin and end of his being; it obliterates the contrast between what he ought to be, and what he is, and thereby vitiates his moral feeling; it inures him to that which is shadowy and perishing, till the spiritual and vital are utterly forgotten.

But the knowledge of which we speak, has the man's self for its object-his whole constitution, corporeal and mental; the moral complexion, and continued workings of the thinking principle within him; the particular kinds of good or evil to which he feels himself prompted, by inward moral bias, or influence from without: the responsibilities by which he is bound, as a reasonable being, under law to the Author of all being; the favourable circumstances in which he is placed, by the tender mercy of the God that made him, and the awfully solemn inquiry whether he is, or is not, so improving these circumstances, as to warrant the hope of a happy immortality. These are a few of the leading topics, which must of necessity be examined, before a man can have any pretensions to the first and highest of all acquirements-the knowledge of himself; for our standing here is not isolated, but morally and spiritually related, and it is impossible to explore the mystery of our being, or to meet its duties and advantages, except in as far as its moral relations are ascertained and appreciated. Situated as we are, it is indispensable, that, in order to know ourselves, we should know the God that made us; and the moral constitution which he has given us; and the law under which he has placed us; and the spiritual

calamity which afflicts us; and the remedy which God has provided for us; and the duties which we owe to that living community, in the midst of which he has placed us. All these things enter vitally into the exercise of self-inquiry; and ignorance of any one of these, or error about it, is sure to involve a corresponding error in the use of Christian privilege, or the practice of Christian duty.

It is this important consideration that we wish the reader to carry along with him to the perusal of the volume before us. We wish him, in short, to see it as a truth, and to adopt it as a settled maxim, that, to be he knows not what, as a moral and religious being, or to think himself to be what he is not, on the one extreme or on the other, is to carry about with him a state of mind, which is sure to mislead his religious practice. If his eye be misguided, when turned inward on his moral condition as a sinner, it cannot but commit a corresponding error, when turned outward on that dispensation of righteousness and love, which God has revealed for his life and salvation; for the last is adapted to the first, with a most amazing exactness, as the antidote to the poison, or the remedy to the disease; and if a man's views of his moral condition be deficient, or exaggerated, or confused and inconsistent, the moral harmony is destroyed, and he is constrained to regard the Christian remedy as superfluous or inadequate, or, in one respect or other, alien or inappropriate. But if this be the effect of self-ignorance on the formation of religious opinions, it must produce the same effects on individual practice, for man feels as he thinks, and acts as he feels, when not restrained by

visions.

circumstances, and no man will embrace the gospel, which is the vital act of all religion, while he feels a moral incongruity between his wants and its proHe may respect the gospel, his conscience may constrain him to admit its general excellence; he may wish it would appear to him as he believes it does to others; but he has not self-knowledge enough, to enable him to embrace it. We plead not for perfection in the knowledge of ourselves, in order to a truly religious practice; for a man may be ignorant of things about himself, which are more or less remote from the essentials of religion, while this ignorance may be quite compatible with his interest in the Christian deliverance. Even in these cases, however, the man is injured, although the injury amounts not to absolute ruin; but if the lep rosy of his ignorance-for it is, in fact, a disease be so deep and pervasive, as to reach the vital parts of that relation, in which he stands to the universal moral Lawgiver, it is dangerous in the extreme; throwing a moral impossibility between him and the salvation of his soul, and convincing all who can estimate his condition, that he must be made to know himself, or perish for ever.

Reasonings of this kind invest the subject with an overwhelming importance, and, alarmed at the deadly injury which inattention to it is inflicting on persons of all classes around us, we request the reader gravely to ponder it in the three following points of view: namely, as it bears on his conversion from sin to godliness; on the gradual renovation of his nature; and the inward satisfaction with which he engages in religious duties.

I. Self-knowledge is indispensable to a genuine conversion from sin to godliness. Of course, we speak of such as have the use, as well as the faculty, of understanding; and who are therefore required to deport themselves in religion, after the manner of reasonable beings; for all such are forbidden to expect that they shall pass unconsciously, or without the gravest exercise of reason, from guilt to acquittance, or from darkness to light, or from the power of Satan unto God. To harbour such a hope, is impiously to suppose, that reason has been given to us in vain; for if this high attribute be good for any thing, its primary use must certainly be, to carry on religious intercourse with the great Being from whom it came. We could live by instinct as a beast lives, but it is reason alone which enables us to adore.

Now, it is a plain doctrine of Scripture, that, since it is intelligent beings who require to be saved, no man can be converted from sin to godliness, without a positive mental apprehension of that remedy for sin which God has provided and set forth in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. To be ignorant of this remedy, or essentially to mistake its true character, is to remain in a state of total unregeneracy; "for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved," except the name of Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, and raised from the dead, to give repentance and remission of sins. There is no salvation in any other, and it is a belief in him, not simply as one who still exists, and bears the name of Saviour, but as one "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteous

ness for the remission of sins," which is the leading characteristic of a converted man. "He that believeth in him," as made known by that which he has achieved on the cross, "shall be saved; and he that believeth not, shall be condemned." But it is morally impossible for any man to avail himself of this announcement, simple and gracious although it be, without a previous or concurrent belief in the realities of his own condition, as a creature who is guilty and perishing. Jesus Christ is truly God; he assumed our nature into union with his own divine person; and " gave himself for us," in the strictly vicarious sense of the expression, "an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." The value of his sacrifice, by this inspired account of it, is unspeakably great; for the people who constitute the Church of God, were purchased with his own blood and we know that such a ransom-price was indispensable, just because it was determined on by Him who alone could count the cost, or fix the terms of human redemption.

These are the views of the subject which the Scriptures of truth invariably furnish; and it is not to be denied, that the adoption of them is at once the essence of Christian belief, and the very turning point of genuine conversion; but how is it possible for a man to adopt them, unless his estimate of sin in general, and particularly of his own sin, be such as to correspond with them? He cannot concur in the device of mercy farther than he sees it called