-even the willing obedience of the affections to a father whom you love. But surely when He puts on in your sight the countenance of a Father-when He speaks to you with the tenderness of a Father-when He tries to woo you back to that house of His from which you have wandered, and to persuade you of His good-will, descends so far as to reason the matter, and to tell you that He is no more seeking any glory from your destruction than He would seek glory from lighting into a blaze the thorns and the briers, and burning them together-ah! my brethren, should it not look plain to the eye of faith how honest and sincere the God of your redemption is, who is thus bowing Himself down to the mention of such an argument! Do lay hold of it, and be impressed by it, and cherish no longer any doubt of the good-will of the Lord God, merciful and gracious; and let your faith work by love to Him who hath done so much and said so much to engage it, and let this love evince all the power of a commanding principle within you, by urging your every footstep to the new obedience of new creatures in Jesus Christ your Lord.

Thus the twofold benefit of the gospel will be realized by all who believe and obey that gospel. Reconciled to God by the death of His Son, regenerated by the power of that mighty and all-subduing Spirit who is at the giving of the Son, your salvation will be complete-washed, and sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

SERMON XXXI.

[DR. DUFF was a favorite student of Dr. Chalmers at St. Andrews. On his nomination as the first missionary sent by the Established Church of Scotland to India, Dr. Chalmers was appointed by the Presbytery of Edinburgh to preach and preside at the ordination on the 12th of August 1829, in St. George's Church. Dr. Duff revisited Scotland in 1835, and having recruited his health, and kindled over all the country a new zeal for the missionary cause, he returned to Calcutta in 1839. The following discourse was delivered in St. George's Church on the 10th of October in that year.]

PSALM XLVIII. 8.

"As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever."

WHEN a matter is only heard by us we may or may not believe, according to our impression of the testimony; but when seen as well as heard, all unbelief is at an end. In another passage of the Psalms we read-"glorious things are said of thee, O Zion." At this stage these things may still be the objects of distrust, or at best of a dim and dubious faith. But when what is said to us is also seen by us, unbelief can no longer stand its ground against such a verification. When it comes to this "That as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God,"-when, in the language of Job, we might say thereof, "I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee," all incredulity or doubt must give way before such a manifestation, and what before was doubted or even disbelieved may thus become a thing of fixed and absolute certainty.

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Now what was true of the visible and earthly Jerusalem may still be true of the heavenly. In regard to the latter the same progress, though not by the very same steps from darkness to light, from doubt to certainty, may be traveled

under our Christian economy, that was frequently experienced in regard to the former under the Jewish economy. The heavenly and enduring realities wherewith we have to do are first heard by the hearing of the ear in the word of the gospel, and may afterward be seen, if not with the eye of the senses at least with the eye of the understanding, when that gospel is made to come to us not in word only but in power. When we thus liken the mental to the ocular demonstration, we may be charged with speaking figuratively, or as some may think mystically; but we make use of no other figure than that which the psalmist does when he prays the Father of lights that he might "open his eyes to behold the wondrous things contained in the law," or than that which the greatest of the apostles does when he prays in behalf of his disciples, that "the eyes of their understandings might be enlightened." Whether in reference to the earthly Jerusalem, the things of which were afar from the Hebrews who lived in the provinces, or in reference to the heavenly Jerusalem, the things of which are above us all who are still but pilgrims and sojourners in this world, in reference to both there is a way in which they may be advanced from things of hearsay to things of perception. The former, that is, the Hebrews, might at any time see the things of their Jerusalem in journeying thitherward, and viewing them with the eye of external observation. But even metaphysicians as well as inspired men tell us of the faculty of inward observation. Writers in science speak to us of conscience and of consciousness, and writers in Scripture speak of the manifestation of the truth to the conscience-such a manifestation as is competent both to the barbarian and the Greek, to the wise and to the unwise; and in virtue of which even an unlettered peasant may be translated out of darkness into marvelous light-may confidently and warrantably say, "I was once blind, but now I see."

It is now a little more than ten years ago, being in August, 1829, that in the work of setting you apart to the office of a Christian missionary, I expatiated as fully as I

could within the limits of a single address on the nature and evidence of this peculiar manifestation. I can only now state the evidence, but without enlarging on the explanation of it. The Spirit of God must interpose ere an effectual cognizance can be taken of it by men. He in the

He in

first instance can remove the vail from the heart, and make the consciousness of him on whom he operates more alive than any light of nature can, to the sinfulness and defects and the wretched infirmities of his own character. the second instance can remove the vail from Scripture, and make the conscience of him on whom he operates more alive than any light of nature can, to the dread authority of the law, to the sacredness and majesty of the great Lawgiver. When such materials as these are thus brought within his reach, the sense of guilt and of danger which is thereby awakened not only begets the desire of relief, but prompts the inquiries and the aspirations of moral earnestness; and the same Spirit who by the light which He casts on the tablet of the human character, led him to behold the virulence of that moral disease under which he labors, also by the light which He casts on the tablet of the outward revelation, leads him to behold the sufficient and altogether suitable remedy provided for it in the gospel. It is this adaptation of the objective Bible to the fears and the disorders and the felt wants of the subjective human nature which leads the converts of the present day to conclude from the writings, what the converts of the first age concluded from the words of the apostle“These men tell us all that is in our hearts, and verily God is in them of a truth." It is not less a matter of rational evidence that the heavenly Physician had to operate on the mind and enable it to see the before hidden things of its own state and the things of Scripture, than it is a matter of ocular evidence to the man who has been relieved of a cataract that the earthly physician had to operate on his body and enable him to see the things of external nature. There is no more of fancy or fanaticism in the one case than the other. The argument is the same in kind, though far more intense in

the feeling of it, with that argument in natural theology which serves to establish that the world of nature came from the hand of a God because of its numerous subserviencies to the physical wants of man. In like manner do we reason that the word of Scripture has come to us from the hands of God, because of its no less striking adaptations and subserviencies to the properties and wants, and so to the wellbeing of man's moral constitution. It affects not the character of the argument while it adds prodigiously to its impression and its strength, that our first sight of its promises is given us in answer to prayer or by the operation of the Spirit from above. In the face of contempt and obloquy do we affirm of this argument, this manifestation of the truth to the conscience, and in virtue of which the gospel is ushered into the heart of man with power, and with the Holy Ghost and with much assurance, that derided as it may have been in the halls of literature, where plebeian Christianity if noticed at all is spoken of in contumely and scorn, the argument is both as firm in its basis, and as logical in the whole of its structure and effect, as any reasoning in moral or mental science propounded from the chair of philosophy in all the forms and with all the confidence of academic demonstration.

It must be on some such evidence that the philosophy of missions is based. We send forth the heralds of salvation, but we can not invest them with the power of working miracles as the badge of their apostleship. Whatever the persuasive influences may be which they carry along with them, it must be in the words which they utter and not in the works which they perform. The credentials of their message must be somehow bound up in the substance of the message itself, for we can not now say, as did the first teachers of Christianity, Verily, the signs of an embassy from heaven have been wrought amongst you in signs and wonders and mighty deeds; but in the absence of these accompaniments, external to the message, and which they could appeal to in other days as vouchers for its credibility, there may still be the same credibility in the