brance; their reward is not confined to this life, though here they generally reap according to that they sow; but this is not all: "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, write, from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." Yea, saith the Spirit, they rest from their labours, and their works are yet to follow them. They will draw in their train eternal consequences, and God will render to every one according to his works.

When I speak of service done for God I would not be supposed to say that the utmost of the powers of any creature could render any true and proper service to the Creator. He is independent of the creature; the cause can never be dependant on its effect; he could act both in the natural and moral world without human agency; and doubtless he would have done so had it been as agreeable to his wisdom as it was easy to his power. In the case before us he could have sent an angel, as he did to the Assyrians, to destroy them. But where would be the reward of the faithful steward? In the moral world the power which he manifested on the day of Pentecost might be again exerted. But what room, then, for the work of faith, the labour of love, and the patience of hope? It is in making the one subservient to the other that he has strengthened the bands which unite society together, and accepts services of his creatures as if done for himself.

We are sometimes afraid of touching on these subjects, lest we should seem to incline to the doctrine of a salvation by works; and some of our hearers are occasionally offended if works are mentioned at all: none, however, will come under this character but such as profess Christ in words, but in works deny him; such as cry, Lord, Lord! but know nothing of going about doing good. Show me thy faith without thy works, and Saint James shall tell thee it is no more than the faith which devils possess; it produces no fruit. But the Christian gives evidence of the genuine character of his faith by his works: "I will show thee my faith by my works ;" and though good works are not the merito

rious condition of our title to eternal life, yet they are the twin graces of genuine faith, and, according to their number and kind, will be the gift of eternal glory; for it is by works that we give evidence of the strength of that principle from which they were produced, the love of God shed abroad in the heart, or Christ dwelling there by faith. Where this exists they will follow as necessarily as an effect its cause; and if God have blessed us with ability, we shall abound-overflow in every good word and work.

Would to God the natural selfishness of many professing Christians were overcome! How few are the number of our Dorcases, those who not only relieve, but go and relieve; seek out the haunts of wretchedness, the charnelhouses of death, soften the pillow of the dying saint, and administer to Christ through his afflicted members. Did Christians consider more that this is the very rule of judgment on which God will try the world, they would practise as well as profess. How can they expect to hear it said, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in pris on, and ye came unto me?" Oh! if a blush could tinge the immortal countenance, would it not be excited by the recollection, of how seldom did we perform such acts; and if pain could possess their glorified nature, would it not be produced by the wish, "Oh! that I had loved Him more and served Him better !"

But, brethren, we hope better things of you, though we thus speak; and things which pertain to salvation. We trust that your obedient hearts are ever waiting for opportu nities of doing good, and that your cry continually is, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" "Make known thy will, and as thou hast freely given me, I will feely render back to thee. Only honour me by making use of me, either my time, talents, substance, health, strength, life, nay, death itself; suffer me to be thy slave, and to lay all at the feet of that Saviour who laid his very life at my feet that I might rise exalted by his fall and find in him my all in all !”

You are aware that, at the conclusion of this service, as

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many of our friends as can, are requested to retire into the lobby of the house, for the purpose of making final arrange. ments for the building of a house for God in Lower Abbeystreet. God has put it into your hearts to build him a house, and he has conferred an honour upon you which your chil dren after you would covet to have been favoured with; he will make you his artificers, and thereby put upon you double honour.

My heart bounds at the thought that many will meet

SERMON XII.

PURE RELIGION.

PREACHED IN BEHALF OF THE ORPHAN ASYLUM IN DUBLIN.

James, i., 27.—Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

In the days of St. James as well as in our own time, many were the pretenders to religion and virtue; many who were not doers of the word, but hearers only, deceiving their own souls. They could not, however, deceive him with whom they had to do, before whose eyes all things are naked and open; dissected in all their parts, whose very word is sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit: То

such professors St. James hesitates not to declare, that all such religion is vain; vain as it regards the creature, who is the subject of it, or the Creator, who is its professed object, and utterly incompatible with the pure religion of the Lord Jesus, required by God and the Father.

The particular tenet which they appear to have held was this: they pleaded for the necessity of faith in the merit of the atonement made by the Lord Jesus as the only way of our justification, but denied the necessity of those works which are the proper evidences of it, concluding that, as his

work of redemption was a perfect act, and made for the individual case of man, a belief in the sufficiency of that atonement is all that God will require: satisfying themselves that they stood perfect in him by a mistaken application of the terms, they folded their arms in apathy and sung,

"Before the throne our surety stands,

Our names are written on his hands."

This system is yet held in honour by thousands of mankind, although its dogmas have been so completely exploded by the apostle; but others there are who, to avoid this track, strike off in quite another direction. Such enforce the necessity of good works as the meritorious condition upon which eternal life is suspended, and the only requisite, or, at least, the pre-eminent one, for its enjoyment; for if they do not reject the belief of the merits of the atonement of the Lord Jesus out of their scheme, yet it is brought in merely as an appendage to the former, and thrown altogether in the back ground; or if, in some, it assume the first place, yet their faith appears a principle of so weak and debilitated a nature that it has rather the appearance of a human than of a Divine and Almighty origin: it is not a faith which makes all things of God and purifies the heart; good works are therefore the title upon which they look for the enjoyment of God, conceiving that, where these are possessed, this will be a countervailing balance for any other deficiencies; nay, leave even a surplusage on the Book of Life.

Now both these classes come under the character of those whom St. James calls "seeming to be religious," for they have both a semblance of religion; they have both copied after the likeness of the heavenly maid in the attitude of profile, each looking at different sides of her person; but neither of them bear her true image, for the symmetry of the whole figure is not discoverable in either position; the one has produced her portrait as in the act of laying hold on the Deity with the one hand, and the other, looking at the other side, has displayed her as scattering abroad to man; but as she never lets her left hand know what her right hand doeth, so it is impossible to form a proper judgment of the beauty of her whole person but in a full front likeness; then we

behold her in the act of faith attached to the Deity on the one hand, and scattering the heavenly seed on the other, enriched and enriching; though poor in herself, for she is but a receiver, yet making many rich.

I. Consider St. James's definition of pure religion.

II. Consider the case of the objects to which he directs our attention.

III. The claims they have on us, and our duty with regard to them.

I. Consider St. James's definition of pure religion.

And here we are naturally led to look at its genuine effects: 1. Upon the heart: and, 2. In the life.

1. Upon the heart-"Keep himself unspotted from the world." Very much is implied in the expression, and must be presupposed by us; the apostle is describing pure religion, and speaking of a heart where "graces reign and love inspires the breast." But this state was attained by gradual progression; this spiritual creation had its beginning like the natural one; the soul was a chaos, or, rather, a stagnation of impurity; the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; that Spirit which is only known by his effects, and which, in the first stage of the new creation, passes over the soul like the wind that goeth whither it listeth; you hear the sound, you feel its effects, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth: God has spoken it, "Let the new creation be," and all things begin to rise good and fair!

This is the first state of a justified believer; the soul is now opened to receive the spring of living water which is to throw off the waters of impurity and to cleanse the heart; it rises at first by slow degrees, but the recipient is a worker together with God, believing and receiving all the aid of the power of God working in him mightily; exulting in new powers, he feels the Spirit of God now as a sanctifier; he knows him not now in his transient operations, first moving upon his soul as the inspiration of God, but as the influence of God; not breathing upon, but flowing in and through his heart. The communion