produce the desired effect, not when they act separately, but only when they act unitedly. The obedience of love, with no mixture of fear, is not uniformly efficacious. The obedience of fear, with no mixture of love, can be neither acceptable as to manner, nor anything like complete as to degree. Both must concur, both must co-operate simultaneously, for producing that frame of delighted awe which is the spring and essence of the service of angels; which makes those resplendent beings at once adoring and "ministering spirits;" prepared either to bend in profoundest homage before the throne of their Creator, or to fly on the wings of alacrity and joy at the slightest intimation of his pleasure. Thus has it been shown that the union of fear and love is necessary for producing the full display of those beneficial effects which belong to each respectively.

Let me then apply to you, my brethren, the address of Moses to the people of Israel:"And now what doth the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul?"-How reasonable, it may be observed, is this requisition! God, in making it, only asks what his power and grace will, if it be not our own fault, enable us to perform. To fear and to love him are an injunc

tion in which all are alike concerned, because all may, if they will, obey it. The precept is alike level to the capacities of the poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant. It demands. no superior endowments of body or mind, but only the cultivation of right dispositions of the heart. What those dispositions are every one may learn, as every one may draw from those sources of divine assistance which are so plentifully provided for our necessities. Again; in making this requisition, God requires of us nothing but what is highly conducive to our real interest and happiness. To fear and to love him are as much the true felicity, as they are "the whole duty of man." If happiness, well or ill understood, be naturally and necessarily the aim of our being, of what importance is it that we should look to the right quarter, and seek "the pearl of great price," where only we shall find it; in the fear and love of our Creator; in obedience to his laws, and the imitation of his moral excellencies! The service therefore enjoined in the text, is, under every point of view, a "reasonable service." But, more than this, it implies a pressing and urgent duty. It must not be neglected: it ought not to be postponed for an instant. The Being, who demands it, is no other than our Creator-our supreme Governor-our final Judge; the disregard of whose commands will be followed, not merely by the

loss of the most enviable rewards, but by the infliction of the most fearful punishments. While the blessings of eternal life are bound up in the fear and love of God, the horrors of eternal death are inseparably connected with the total want of these grand principles of true religion. Let us seriously consider these things. "Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear," remembering that he will prove at last "a consuming fire" to all his despisers and adversaries. Let us, under a due recollection of his benefits, and especially the blessings of redemption, love him "with all the heart and mind, and soul and strength," and manifest that we do so by the faithful and zealous observance of his righteous precepts. We shall then, through the divine mercy, and the infinite merits of our Saviour, finally come to those regions where " perfect love will cast out" every remaining particle of slavish "fear;" where the two principles of fear and love will exist and act together, under a form and operation the most beautiful and beneficial; where they will aid each other to the utmost, producing uninterrupted and unimpaired obedience, and that "fulness of joy" which is the happy lot of angels and the glorious" inheritance of the saints in light."

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SERMON II.

ON THE CHARACTER AND PIETY OF DANIEL.

DANIEL vi. 10.

NOW WHEN DANIEL KNEW THAT THE WRITING WAS SIGNED, HE WENT INTO HIS HOUSE; AND HIS WINDOWS BEING OPEN IN HIS CHAMBER TOWARD JERUSALEM, HE KNEELED UPON HIS KNEES THREE TIMES A DAY, AND PRAYED, AND GAVE THANKS BEFORE HIS GOD, AS HE DID AFORETIME.

AMONG the number of excellent and illustrious characters, left upon record for our instruction in the sacred writings, we shall find no one more worthy of our attentive contemplation than Daniel. Whether he be regarded as a prophet of the Most High, as the minister of an earthly potentate, or as a man of exalted piety and virtue, he stands in the foremost class, and the highest rank of dignity.

As a prophet, he perhaps excelled all, who went before him, in the clearness and importance of his predictions. His prophecies form a connected series, reaching from his own times down to the age of the Christian dispensation. He has thrown more light upon the important

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doctrines of a future state, the resurrection of the last day, and a final judgment, than any other writer of the Old Testament. He marked out, with exactness, the period which was to elapse between the return from the Babylonish captivity and the appearance and atonement of the Saviour of the world. He sketched, with somewhat of the accuracy of an historian, the principal revolutions which were to take place during a long interval of nearly five hundred years. He extended his view far beyond the commencement of the Christian æra, and appears to have anticipated some of those remarkable measures of time which were afterwards revealed to St. John in the visions of the Apocalypse. Thus was he favoured with singular discoveries of the ways of Providence, and the wonders of futurity.

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As the minister of an earthly potentate, excellent spirit was found in him." He recommended himself to the notice of successive monarchs, partly indeed by his wonderful skill in the interpretation of their dreams, but partly also by his natural prudence and abilities. His reputation for wisdom was so great, that the prophet Ezekiel speaks in derision of the king of Tyre, as deeming himself" wiser than Daniel." Though a Jewish captive in Babylon, he was ranked by Darius among the first nobles of his empire, and "the king thought to