revelation so enter into our experience and our hearts as byand-by to be clothed with the additional authority of sensible and experimental evidence. This, however, is not the general character of the truths of revealed religion; and it is just because these are not discoverable by natural means that they have been revealed to us. The disclosures of the Gospel do not, as a general thing, appertain to the domain of reason and observation. They belong to that higher sphere, where God alone is the discoverer, and faith alone is able to exercise cognizance. It has been claimed, I think with justice, that the constitutional sinfulness and actual guilt of man may disclose themselves to his unaided consciousness. It has also been held, but manifestly on very inferior evidence, that the soul's immortality was a discovery precedent to revelation. The moment, however, we proceed beyond these elementary truths, we must look for another guide. Reason can not tell us, and nothing but revelation can, how God stands affected toward the sinner; whether repentance and reformation are sufficient to restore the guilty to His favor, or whether He will exact some atonement, or execute some penalty. What is to be the condition of the wicked in a future state —what the kind, degree, and duration of their penalties or pains-none but God can inform us. The same is true in regard to what constitutes acceptable piety-what moral changes will fit a sinful mortal for heaven-by what agency effected by what friendly mediation and interference they are to be brought near us-what shall be the occupations and enjoyments of upright souls in heaven. We know nothing, and can know nothing, but what is revealed to us, in regard to the nature, vocation, and destiny of angels, good and evil; nothing of the nature, office, and dignity of the Holy Spirit; nothing of the character, power, functions, and glory of the Savior; nothing of his relations to God, the Maker of all things, or to us, whom he came to save. All of these truths, and they constitute the sum of the Gospel, are mani

festly above the reach of human reasoning. They belong exclusively to the region of revelation, and they are to be implicitly received, on the authority of the great Revealer, by all who aspire to be "laborers together with Him." To reject this light is to doom ourselves to a starless, endless night. To spurn away this guide is a flat rejection of Christianity.

This implicit trust in the word of God is what is so often set forth in the New Testament as the one comprehensive duty of the Christian, as including his entire function and work as a laborer together with God. The entire joint operation, so far as personal salvation is concerned, is thus set forth in 2 Thess., ii., 13: "God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." The Gospel is here epitomized, and the two great concurring forces concerned in the salvation of a soul announced in one pithy sentencedivine influences, and a strong, loving, working faith. is thus we are laborers together with God.

It

Does our doctrine throw dishonor upon the human understanding, and prescribe a blind, stupid credulity as the Gospel's great panacea ? So far from this, it puts every earnest, ingenuous inquirer upon the strenuous task of searching out the truth as it is in Jesus. At the peril of our souls we must know the prescribed conditions under which we are called to "work out our salvation through God, who worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure." It will not do to float along with the current, and submit questions of so profound and intense interest to idle tradition, or human authority, or Church pretensions, any more than to the rash temerity of our own reason. "We are laborers together with God," and we want to know, and we must know, or die in our sins, what conditions he imposes upon the joint operation. I by no means satisfy the demands of so high an obligation by ascertaining what is the current or popular opin

ion, or what is the voice of the fathers. I may not trust to a multitude, nor to venerable antiquity, for my business is to learn what is the mind of God. His own account of the matter is in my hands, and there I must search for his doctrine, armed with whatever resources diligent, thoughtful, prayerful study, and good books, and learned, simple-hearted, God-fearing teachers may be able to supply. I specially desire not to be misunderstood on this most important point. The Gospel not only tolerates-it imperatively demands of every Christian that he should seek diligently to know the true import of the Bible; but its reverent Spirit withholds him from all rash, profane pretensions to sit in judgment upon the wisdom or fitness of its revelations.

Our religious movements must all harmonize with the laws of mind which the sovereign will of God has established, and which all who co-operate with him in this great enterprise must respect no less than the sacred oracles. They constitute unchangeable conditions, to neglect which insures discomfiture in all Christian enterprises. Our text and its discussion sufficiently indicate the agencies and instrumentalities which may be employed for the promotion of religion. It tolerates none but moral forces, addressed to the will and the conscience.

Persecution, in all its forms and degrees, is a gross violation of this fundamental principle. Compulsion and intimidation can not produce conviction, and can not, therefore, promote piety, though they can hypocrisy.

There may be a social persecution, which has no power of pains and penalties, but which may yet inflict serious evils in the shape of neglects and mortifications, or may offer bribes for conformity in the way of attentions and compliments. Men have sometimes been deterred from acting honestly in the choice of their Church through the fear of pecuniary injury. Countenance and patronage in business, loans, banking facilities, are sometimes tendered or denied for sectarian, though

nominally for religious ends. These are approved and not untried methods of making hypocrites, but they can not advance the interests of religion. All attempts to promote sect by claims of superior influence, or respectability, or wealth, or learning, by high pretensions of any sort not connected with truth and righteousness, are sins against the first principles of the Gospel, and ought to brand with suspicion and dishonor all who resort to such corrupting expedients.

For the same reason, the admission of any other than pure, Christian motives into our religion-any self-seeking-any shrinking from the cares or sacrifices which obedience to religious convictions would impose, is likely to prove fatal to Christian character becomes an element of weakness and corruption utterly incompatible with sound piety and growth in grace. It is a grievous offense against the Gospel, which God will in some form avenge.

Divine Providence has imposed upon the American Churches a duty unknown to the Christianity of other lands. The old hemisphere has poured out upon our shores two millions of the most ignorant and superstitious people who any where bear the Christian name. God has sent them hither that they may be made partakers of our pure saving faith. Until recently, we and our fathers have slept over our task unconsciously. It is now some ten years since the first serious attempt was made to rouse our churches to their high duty, and to the imminent danger of neglecting it. Much Christian zeal and effort have been awakened, and liberal expenditures of money and exertion incurred. express my deliberate opinion, that during these ten years no valuable prog ress has been made in this massive, urgent Christian enter prise, and that we have done little more than multiply obstacles to future success. We have, to be sure, succeeded in rousing ourselves to a highly conservative indignation against the encroachments of Romanism, but our efforts have, mean

time, had the effect of provoking against us the strongest prejudices and instincts of our Roman Catholic population. The power of the priest over his erring followers has been strengthened three-fold, and the people who, at the commencement of the movement, were disorganized, as sheep without a shepherd, and so in a condition highly favorable to evangelizing labors, are now marshaled into a phalanx impenetrable at least to such methods of aggression as have hitherto been employed. Is it premature to suspect the wisdom of a policy which has met with a failure so signal and universal? Have we sufficiently considered the conditions under which this and all other Christian enterprises are to be conducted? We have had for our object to convince human beings of like infirmities and tendencies with ourselves of their errors, and to bring them into harmony with our opinions and sentiments. We have sought to accomplish these ends by a violent assault upon their prejudices-by rousing against ourselves and our mission their strong passions and bitter enmity. It was our proper business, in all meekness, and long-suffering, and charity, to direct these erring souls to a crucified Savior, and we have done little else than stun their ears with loud denunciations of Pope, Jesuits, and priests, all leagued together for the subversion of our liberties. In a word, as laborers together with God," we were provided with spiritual weapons mighty to the pulling down of these strong-holds of sin, but we have chosen to draw nothing from Heaven's armory but its thunder-bolts. It will probably require an age to retrieve these grievous errors. Our progress has all been in the wrong direction, and it is high time to retrace our steps, and to begin anew this indispensable work. These men are to be converted, if at all, in the usual wayby the truth as it is in Jesus, spoken in love. We must deserve their confidence and secure it. We must approach them in the spirit of kindness and affection. We must dismiss from our rhetoric such gaudy, dazzling figures as "the