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for you saw no great evil in it; and I have heard you talking about your playmates; and you know how many vain, foolish, and sinful thoughts you have indulged on the Lord's day. In these you certainly break the Sabbath. To keep the Sabbath as God requires, is to "call it a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and to honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words." If this were the case, it would show that you had " 'delight in the Lord;" and the Lord would delight in blessing you.

F. I think, Henry and Catharine, that you must be convinced, from what your mother has said, that you have not such good hearts as you imagined.

H. I do not think that I am so good as I ought to be; but then you said, that our thoughts were only evil continually; and I do not think that.

F. It is God who says this, and he knows us better than we do ourselves, and cannot say any thing that is false. You are young, and cannot be charged with the evils that many indulge in; but both your mother and I have discovered in all of you the seeds of evil, which, if they are not destroyed, but cherished by indulgence, will grow up rank and foul, and yield an awful harvest of wickedness, destructive to your bodies, and especially to your immortal souls.

C. Oh, Father, I think you make us worse than other children.

F. You are not worse than other children; you are in some respects better than some children that I know.

H. But what are the seeds of evil which you have seen in us, Father?

F. Besides the enmity of heart which you have shown to God, there are seeds of evil I shall just mention. You have not always manifested an affectionate obedience to your mother and me; you have often shown yourselves very angry with one another, and endeavoured to resent the injuries you have received; you have not unfrequently accused each other upon very slight grounds, or none at all; and if you have not positively taken what was not your own, you have at least coveted, wished to have had them, and been very dissatisfied when you could not obtain the objects of your desires. Now, let me inforın you that God is angry with sinners every day; and, because of their evil dispositions and practices, he has revealed his wrath from heaven against their ungodliness and unrighteousness, and has said, "cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.'

C. And are we cursed?

F. "We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God," and are therefore under the curse.

C. And what will that curse do to us? F. Unless we are delivered from it, we shall be eternally miserable under it.

C. But will not God forgive our sins if we are very sorry for them?

M. God can forgive our sins, and he will do it, upon our repenting and turning to him; but not for our sorrow, nor for our repentance. These dispositions are necessary to our enjoyment of the blessing, but they by no means procure it.

E. But he does this for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, does he not?

M. Yes; the Apostle Paul says, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." In order to be partakers of this redemption, and obtain the forgiveness of sin, we must know and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

F. The person and sufferings of our glorious Mediator, Jesus Christ, shall be the subject of next conversation.

CONVERSATION V.

ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST.

E. You spake, Father, of the Lord Jesus Christ being our Mediator; now, though I have often heard him called by this title, I wish to know more particularly what it means.

F. A mediator among men, is one who endeavours to bring into agreement two parties that are at variance. The office of a mediator among men is well known among all civilized nations. As to a Mediator between God and man, though the necessity of such a person has been strongly felt by men of all na tions, it is divine revelation alone that has discovered an acceptable and suitable Mediator. In the consciousness of guilt, the heathens apply to their constituted priests to avert the wrath of their deities, and conciliate their favour, though they are grossly ignorant of the only living and true God; yet their conduct in this shows that they feel their want of a Mediator.

E. I think I never met with the word me. diator except in the New Testament.

F. Nevertheless you find many things said in the Old Testament that refer to the medi. ation of Christ. The threatenings against the serpent, of bruising his head by the seed

E

of the woman, regards him as mediator; for it is part of his work, in reconciling man to God, to destroy the works of the devil. In this work he was to suffer from the malignity of the serpent, who should bruise his heel; but this also would contribute to effect our peace with God, for it is by his sufferings in the flesh that has obtained peace and salvation for us. To Abraham, Christ was promised, as his seed in whom all nations should be blessed; and this blessedness is obtained by the nations knowing and confiding in the "one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." And all the institutions of God by Moses-the tabernacle, the mercy-seat, the ark of the covenant, the consecration of the high priest and priests, the sacrifices for sin, the burnt offerings and peace offerings-had a typical reference to the mediation of the Lord Jesus; and as he has come, according to the promise of God, all these typical or figurative institutions are for ever abolished.

E. I suppose, then, the Jews now do wrong in attending to the institutions of Moses, since Christ came into the world.

F. They certainly do; for "now once in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." God abhors all other offered sacrifice for sin, and

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