is because "he being dead yet speaketh" more important lessons than any of the dead I have known, that I bring his character before you this day. Let me, in dependence on divine grace, enumerate a few of the lessons, "he being dead yet speaks" to the ministers and people of Christ.

First. He speaks to us strongly on the danger that environs a lofty intellect. No man ever possessed a mind of higher range, and a greater power of fervent and impressive oratory. None, with the exception of his illustrious father in Christ, Dr. Chalmers, was so able to arrest the attention, and gain the hearts, and mould the doings, of his audience. But it was his calamity that he knew and felt too well the greatness of his genius; and this made him fancy he could penetrate the arcana of eternity in virtue of his intellectual prowess, and gather to his bosom flowers that bloomed not for man upon earth, and make known a geography which is to be known hereafter only. Like the eagle, he soared toc near the sun, and was struck blind. He was misled by sparks of his own kindling. Had he been but a retired and ordinary parish minister, how happy had it been for Edward Irving! But so it is; the strongest swimmer is first drowned, and the strongest and the foremost warrior most frequently slain.

Here is a lesson for men of great parts. It is not in this case that grace is needed in the inverse ratio of our intellectual strength. The greater our intellect ir, the greater our need of grace to guide it. The strong man has most need of discretion, and the rich man of prudence. Let it be your fervent prayer, that the powers you have derived from the Creator may be encased in Here also is a lesson to men grace derived from Christ Jesus your Redeemer.

of moderate talents. Envy not the lofty minds of the eloquent and the able: the higher you rise, the greater is your liability to fall. Let us remember, that Davi I's weakness, backed by the blessing of the God of Israel, was stronger than the strength of Goliath without it. Our warfare is not with intellectual, but with spiritual arms. The only desirable gift is the grace of God.

Secondly. "He being dead yet speaketh" of the dangers of ministerial popularity. Never yet did obscurity destroy ministerial usefulness, but often has it been impaired and neutralized by the poison of the popular breath. He who is gone had often and again among his audience, the crowns and the coronets of It the world-the wise, and the rich, and the illustrious; and the matter of wonder is, not that he should have fallen, but that he did not fall much sooner. would be well if those, who spare no condemnatory language when they speak of him who is gone, would but think, that if they had stood in his place, their fall would have been more speedy, and more disastrous. He became giddy from the eminence to which he was raised; and after staggering awhile, he fell, a warning to all never to forget that, "by grace they stand," wherever and whatever be the niche which they occupy.

But there is an especial admonition from his tomb to our congregations. His people almost idolized him; they listened to him instead of listening to God; and therefore the Almighty taught them, by bitter experience, that man is not to receive the glory that pertains exclusively to Jehovah. O never was minister-worship so signally punished; and never, I trust, will the lesson cease to be remembered by generations yet to come.

Thirdly. "He being dead yet speaketh" respecting the danger of self-sufficiency and self-confidence. We are, by no means, prepared to assert, that the

verdict of others is to determine the nature of our own decisions on the Word of the living God; and we are not prepared to assert, that any national or individual church is infallible; we must all stand or fall by what we ourselves have thought and done, not by what others have said. But when the whole voice of Christendom is lifted up against an opinion which we have cherishedwhen martyrs have sealed by their blood, and apostles have preached to the death, and reformers have proclaimed in every land, that one proposition is from the Scripture, and the other in direct opposition to its statements, it surely becomes a young and inexperienced divine, to doubt, to pause, to give way. Because we are not to bow to the ipse dixit of any, we are not therefore to reject the weight of the testimony of the wise, the holy, the ancient. The whole Church of Scotland decided, through her venerable assembly, that the views of Mr. Irving, respecting the humanity of Christ, were unscriptural; and yet he persisted in his adherence to his former statements, and pitched his own judgment against that of the most venerable, and learned, and holy fathers of the Christian Church. I do feel, that next to the Bible, we are to honour the Church. But the fact is, that the whole inspiration of the Word of God was clean at issue with those views which Mr. Irving broached respecting the humanity of Jesus. As to the claims to miraculous powers, never were claims so wild and preposterous. I defy them to produce one single instance of miraculous power. The miracles of our Lord and his Apostles were so palpable, that men never disputed their supernatural character, but declared that they were either from God or from Satan; but, in the present day, the miracles said to be wrought are such miserable failures, that the question is among themselves whether they really be miracles or not. Doubt is condemnation here. Nothing should be more satisfactory to these deluded men than the fact, that, a fortnight before the death of him to whom we allude, one of the gifted persons, speaking (as he professed) by the Spirit, prophesied that their leader would not die. What is the fact? And what is the inference? I pressed this single incident lately home to the conscience of one of the deluded people, and he told me that Jeremiah had prophesied falsehoods, and, if he erred, the prophets in Newman-street surely had license to err. So indeed they had. So infatuated are these fanatics that, rather than humble themselves to see the absurdity of their views, they will let go their belief in the inspiration of the word of the living God, and shake the very foundations of all our Christianity. May God deliver us from a spirit of self-confidence and selfsufficiency, and lead us to that happy temperament which stands neither in receiving wholesale and unexamined the opinions of men, nor in rejecting and despising them as less to be depended on than our own. Above all, let us ever feel that dependence on the Spirit of God which is our greatest strength and security. Fourthly. "He being dead yet speaketh" respecting the danger of leaving truth, even in the smallest degree, and preferring opinions simply because they are novel. There is but one straight and true way, while there are a thousand false. In that way we find that the pious and the illustrious dead have walked, and found peace; and this way is so clear and well-defined that we may rest assured, whatever scintillations of truth, unobserved before, we bring to the view of men, these must be on the surface only. The great truths of the Bible were, perhaps, more distinctly seen and grasped, at the dawn of the Christian era, than in these its latter days. We may illustrate, and we may place in stronger

light, the great articles of a standing or a falling Church; but find other and Take care, then, of hitherto undiscovered and essential truth, we never can. deviating from the path of truth by an inch. If once you leave that consecrated and beaten way, you know not to what darkness and error you may eventually come. You then follow the ignis fatuus of human fancy, and lose the only light to the feet, and lamp to the path-you lose the thread that leads through the mazy labyrinth of human life-you start away on a wrong scent.

He who is dead, speaks powerfully on this subject. He started some wild vagaries on the millenium, and laid these down as axioms in Christian doctrine : but he stopped not here; one wild notion was hatched after another, till the Had he been spared, unhappy author was lost in a maze of confusion and error. I doubt not but that he would have retracted his errors, and returned to the good old ways of Scriptural and solid inquiry. As it is, let us learn from the dead the lesson which the Almighty has not seen meet to allow us to learn from the lips of the living-that it is an evil and bitter thing to forsake the plain and the long-established ways of truth. And now, could he re-visit them whom he has led astray, O, how fervid and how earnest would be his exhortations to abandon their wild and unscriptural creed, and return to the Church of their fathers, the mother from whose breasts they first drew the sincere milk of the Word, and by whose hallowed altars they were nurtured and fed. O, let the confessed hypocrisy of some of these fanatics, and the discovered iniquity of others of them-let the mockery of miraculous power they exhibit, and the lying prophecies they utter, prove to these deluded mortals that their church is a refuge of lies, and, with a few sincere and holy exceptions, a sanctuary for hypocrisy, fanaticism, and sin.

To us, who have escaped these delusions, the dead would speak-Do not suppose that, because you have the form of godliness, therefore all is well: do not suppose that a sound creed is universally connected with a sanctified heart. Remember heart and life heresy is much worse than head heresy. Remember that to no purpose will you say, "Lord! Lord!" if you have not done those things which he has commanded. May the Holy Spirit enlighten our minds to see the truth, and sanctify our hearts to feel and to follow it!

THE CHRISTIAN A NEW CREATION.

REV. H. M'NEILE, A.M.

ST. JUDE'S CHURCH, LIVERPOOL, OCTOBER 19, 1834.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new."-2 CORINTHIANS, v. 17.

By creation, all men are in Adam. As God created the plants and the trees of the field, each in its perfect state, in its full maturity, with its seed in itself, and has created nothing since, but all others have proceeded forth and come from the first creation-so also with man. Adam was created in the fulness and perfection of his maturity, with his seed in himself; and there has never been a man created since: all we, the rest, are from him, unfoldings from that parent bud, streams from that parent fountain. But before there were any unfoldings, the bud was blighted; before there were any streams, the fountain was poisoned. Adam offended God. When he sinned, we all sinned; for we were in him-the whole human race in him. When he offended God, we all offended God; when he incurred God's anger, so did we; when he fell under the penalty of death, so did we; when he deserved hell, so did we. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so" (argues the Apostle,)—" and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk); but it is the fall and corruption of the nature of every one that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and, therefore, in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." So speaks our Church, gathering her sentiments from the language of the Apostle.

Marvel not, therefore, my brethren, when we say to you, You must be born again. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God:" except a man be born again, he must take the curse and the ruin of Adam, and continue, throughout eternity, an enemy against God. Although he may, for a season, while he is in this world, hide from himself the misery that that enmity brings with it; although he may dissipate his thoughts for a time, and endeavour to screen himself from the consciousness of his state in the sight of God; and although he may succeed in so doing, and his treacherous memory, and his deceitful heart, and his benumbed conscience, may live careless about the God he has offended; yet he cannot continue so. The flesh supplies him, for the present, a cage wherein the bird hides itself; but that cage will be broken, and that bird must fly forth, and the eagle-eye of God must be met; and then, if the

spirit be not congenial with the character of God, misery-unspeakable, unchangeable, eternal misery, must be the irrevocable consequence.

Marvel not, therefore, brethren, if we be urgent in telling you, you must be born again. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We know not what a day may bring forth. This day, this very day, hath ushered one, who worshipped with us, into eternity: this very day, while we were engaged in the worship of God here this forenoon, an immortal soul took its flight from an earthly tabernacle, and met, in nakedness, the Father of spirits. O, my brethren, marvel not if, with the urgency of true friendship, the believing urgency of Christian friendship, we tell you, with a penetrated heart, that you must be born again.

As an all-sufficient atonement was absolutely indispensable, in order that God, consistently with his character of righteousness and holiness, should accept a sinner, so an inward, a spiritual, a vital change, is indispensably necessary, in order that a sinner may be accepted of God. God in Christ presents himself for our acceptance: "Receive me," says he. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself; and he hath committed to us the ministry of reconciliation so that we are now "ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled unto God." It is not that God should be reconciled to you: we have nothing to do there; that is God's own doing; and he has done it in Jesus: but we want you to be reconciled unto him: which thing cannot be except ye be changed within you.

Now, the Apostle Paul here says, that, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature"-" a new creation" is the literal translation of the text. This is a most remarkable expression, corresponding with the one I have already quoted more than once of our Lord-" born again." It marks something more than a mere reformation of outward conduct; something more than the application of the outward ordinance of baptism, as I taught you this forenoon. My brethren, this marks an inward, a spiritual change, at the very root of a sinner's being, in the depth of his heart. It is not the cleansing of the outside of the cup and the platter, but of the inward man. It is not the clearing away of the rubbish from the top of the sepulchre, that it may be whited and appear cleansed; but it is the clearing of the filth that is within. Brass may be cast into the furnace and melted; it may be cleared from dross, and polished to a most beautiful brightness; but it is still brass, and all the polishing in the world cannot change its nature, and make it gold. A sow may be washed so that not one particle of mire shall remain upon her, and let go clean; but still she is a sow, and all the washing in the world cannot change her nature that she should continue clean. A natural man may be polished by education; he may be washed by outward reformation he may be tutored into a graceful companion, an excellent member of society, a kind friend, an affectionate parent, or husband, or brother, and all that is admirable and estimable in the sight of men: all this may be done, but still he is a natural man; and all the cultivation on the face of the earth, all the education, all the refinement, all the knowledge, all the civilization, all the acquirements in science and literature that he can heap upon him, or that the most accomplished scholars can heap upon him, cannot help him at all, or go one jot towards making him a spiritual man. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness unto him; neither can he

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