this salutary conviction shut you up to the only remaining alternative even the refuge set before you in the gospel. You will there find a free offer of forgiveness for the past, and a provision laid before you by which all who believe are carried forward to amendment and progressive virtue for the future. It is open to all and at the taking of all, but in proportion to the frankness and freeness and cordiality of the offer will be the severity of that awful threatening to those who despise it-How shall they escape if they neglect so great a salvation?

SERMON XIII

[PREACHED at Kilmany, 20th March, 1814. At Glasgow, in February, 1817.]

JOHN XIV. 21.

"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

Ir were well if we could strip every term, and every process signified by that term, of all the unnecessary mysteriousness which is annexed to it. To manifest is to show plainly; and the question comes to be, In what sense can an invisible being, as God or Jesus Christ, show himself plainly to creatures in this world? It appears to me that there may be two ways of it. First, you all understand what it is to have the conception of a distant friend. Your firm belief that he is your friend, is one thing; your lively conception of him is another. The belief may remain steady-the conception may vary every hour in clearness and intensity. Have you never experienced a livelier conception at one time than another of his unwearied regard, of his trusty attachment, of his affectionate looks, of his benignant countenance? Yes, you have; and in those moments a finer glow of tenderness has come over you, and a feeling of more joyful security in the possession of his friendship. Now, the same God who can endow you with one faculty can endow you with another, or bring that other, when it pleases Him, into livelier exercise. The same God who can work in you the faith and conception of a distant friend, can work in you the faith and the conception of Himself. It is very true that conception may often outstrip a well-grounded faith; but God can prevent this; He can bring the one under the control of the other. He does so

in the case of your friend, and your conceptions of him, however exquisite and lively, are restrained by the evidence of memory from running into wildness. Your conception of him may almost brighten into the vivacity of sense, and yet you may conceive no more of him than what you know him to be, and what you remember him to be. And so of God. Your conception of Him may brighten into ecstasy, and yet be restrained from running into any false or distorted view of Him by the control of a sober and rational faith -even that faith which rests upon the evidence of His word. Now this faith and this conception of God are both given us by God. In so doing, God shows Himself to the soul of man. He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, can shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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I am not fond of using terms which might not be readily apprehended by men of a mere popular understanding, and should like to feel as if there was none of the obscurity of metaphysics in what I say when I tell you of the distinction between faith and conception. You are conceiving a distinct object when something like a sensible representation of that object is present to your fancy. When that object is an absent friend, the conception of him is at times so lively that you may have heard people say in such a case, "I think I see him; I can figure him in a very lively and impressive manner; his voice, his manner, his countenance, are all present with me." And if it be a voice which you know never speaks of you but with tenderness-if it be a manner which indicates, throughout all its varieties, a steady and unalterable attachment to yourself-if it be a countenance that never beams upon you but with a look of benignity and regard, then it is evident that this lively conception will have an exhilarating influence upon your spirits; you will have a more powerful impression of sensible comfort, in as far as it is dependent upon the friendship of him who is thus exhibited in a way so striking to the eye of your imagination. Such a visitation upon your mind as this will be a visitation of peace, and joy, and affection;

and though this be the habitual state of your spirit in regard to him whom you love, and who is at a distance from you, yet will those periods when the vision of his excellences comes in all its bright and fascinating array into remembrance be at all times counted by you as those most precious moments of delight, when his value is most strongly felt, and all the cordiality of his regards is most exquisitely rejoiced in.

Now, my brethren, to give you an idea of the distinction. between this lively conception of him, which, in point of vivacity and affection, borders so nearly upon a sensible representation, and that steady faith by which the real existence of this said friend, and all the attributes of worth and of kindness which belong to him, are the matters of your conviction, the former may fluctuate from one day to another, and from one hour to another, while the latter remains absolute and entire at all times, and is just as much the object of thorough belief to-day as it was yesterday, or as it will be to-morrow. There may, perhaps, be no one moment in which I have the least doubt of his existence, or there may be no one moment in which I have the least doubt of his character, either as it regards its own intrinsic merit and its peculiar aspect of tenderness to myself. But with all this unalterable belief, there is one other thing which ever alters, and may be in a state of constant fluctuation. There are moments at which the imagination of my friend flits before my inner man in a brighter perspective; there are moments in which I have a readier command of his every feature and his every peculiarity; there are moments at which his revered person or his smiling aspect of benignity will unaccountably rush upon my heart, and fill it either with the vivid remembrance of former joy or the bright anticipations of future intercourse. Yes, there are such moments familiar to the experience of many a human being, and yet they may be succeeded by other moments. when-though abandoned by all this cheering imagery, and left to the dull tenor of their more ordinary thoughtsthe belief that your friend is, and that he has the same

worth of character and the same warmth of attachment as ever, remains an unvaried and an unshaken element within you.

And I trust you further perceive how, though this conception may bring all this home to the eye of your mind in a manner more pictorial and impressive than the mere belief of it can do, yet it by no means necessarily follows that your conception outruns your belief. It is the office of conception to place your friend, according to all the varied attributes which belong to him, in a brighter representation before you, but still it may not represent any more than you know to be true, and that, as a deliberate judgment of the understanding, you think you have good grounds for believing to be true. You are furnished with the proofs of memory and of past experience for believing the reality of all that you are conceiving. Conception may not add a single feature to its original; it only gives a clearer and more impressive view of all the features which actually belong to him. It may not suggest to you a single idea about him which you may not have good reason for believing to be just. It may not deal in any of the representations of falsehood, while it brightens and sets into more forcible display before you the representations of truth.

Now the same is true, my brethren, of the invisible beings and doctrines of revelation. I may have a steady and entire belief in the power of God, and yet the conception of that power, as expatiating over all the elements of the moral and material universe, may fill and elevate my imagination, and carry a greater movement of the sublime along with it at one time than another. The faith may be invariable, but the conception may fluctuate. The same is true of His wisdom, and of His goodness, and of His holiness, and of His truth. Even His tender mercy, rejoicing over all His works-from which I am so far from being excluded, that, through the word of the gospel salvation, I am invited to share in it-may be believed, and work all the essential influences of belief on my hopes and my feel