be gazed on with admiring wonder by thoughtless man, are but wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

It can scarcely, I presume, be necessary to state, that when I speak of St. Paul, as a standard of Christian principle to which it is your duty to aspire, a pattern of Christian holiness, which it will be your happiness to imitate, I refer not to those extraordinary circumstances of his history, by which he stands pre-eminently distinguished above all that ever lived in the love, and died for the faith of Jesus; but in the spirit of his character, in which we are commanded in the words of my text, to be followers of him, as he also was of Christ; and in what feature of that character, can you think it consistent with a Christian's profession and obligations, not to resemble him? Is it in his humble confessions of the depravity of his own nature -the depths of his own unworthiness? And

is

your nature less depraved? Are you less unworthy? Is it in the frequency and fervour with which he bent his knees in supplication to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for every spiritual influence and blessing? And do you less require those blessings and those influences or have you more reason to hope, that without prayer you can obtain them? Is

it in his unmixed, undivided dependance for salvation on the alone meritorious sufferings and righteousness of the Redeemer? And are you prepared to plead your own before the judgment seat of Christ? Is it in the living sanctifying nature of his faith, which so wrought by love, as to make his whole life one hallowed offering of grateful obedience; and where will Scripture justify you in trusting to a cold speculative assent to the truth of the doctrines of the Gospel-a professed belief that brings forth no fruits of righteousness -a dead faith? Is it in the unreservedness with which St. Paul surrendered up his whole heart to God, that you are willing to be unlike him? And will God accept a divided heart from you? Has the first and great commandment been annulled, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength?" Is it in that realizing view of a Saviour God, as ever with him; and a glorious eternity ever before him, which enabled the Apostle, amidst sufferings which it wrings the heart even to read of, to exclaim, “Our light affliction which is but for a moment, is working out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory?" And are you then at liberty to love the world, and the things of the world; and

in their wild pursuit to forget God and eternity? Do you imagine, that you are not required, like St. Paul, to crucify the flesh and the lusts thereof, and to walk after the spirit? When then was the awful sentence repealed, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; for he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." Is it then in the warmth and devotedness of his love for the Saviour, that you do not feel yourselves bound to resemble him; and in what respect are your obligations to Jesus less than his? Do you not profess to believe, that for you, as for St. Paul, He descended from the Majesty on High, to shroud his glory under the garb of mortality; to stoop to a manger on earth, that you might be exalted to a throne in heaven; to linger for years in this world of sin and sorrow, a houseless wanderer, without where to lay his head, that His Father's house might be your eternal home-to die in inconceivable agony on the cross, that you might live in unutterable bliss at God's right hand for evermore? Would such generous self-devotion in an earthly friend, overwhelm you with gratitude; and is it then, because the friend who thus laid down His life for you, was "God manifest in the flesh," that you feel no thankfulness, and make no return for a love, which

as much surpasses the sublimest display of human affection, as the God of glory is greater than a worm of the dust? Is the blood of Jesus less precious now, than when it first was shed, or less deserving of a martyr's zeal? Oh! no-fresh in all its purifying peace-speaking constraining influences, as the moment it gushed from his pierced side on Calvary, it still demands, and oh! surely it deserves, a life of obedient gratitude, an eternity of rapturous praise! Or, are the benefits which that blood has purchased for sinners less valuable now than in the days of St. Paul. Is redemption from the curse and slavery of sin a less inestimable privilege now, than it was eighteen centuries ago? Has the peace of God lost any of its inconceiveable blessedness; have the glories of heaven been dimmed by the lapse of years: or, is the celestial crown that sparkles in imperishable splendour on the seraph's brow, an object less worthy the ambition of an immortal spirit?

Compare yourselves then, I affectionately and earnestly entreat of you, my dear brethren, with the great model of the Christian character, which I have this day endeavoured to delineate; and if on comparison, you find that your principles and pursuits, hopes and

desires, affections and anxieties, are altogether unlike his-that while he was "crucified to the world, and the world to him, by the cross of Christ," you are living in the friendship of that world, guided by its maxims, and influenced by its motives, courting its smile, and fearing its frown: if he counted all things but loss, that he "might win Christ, and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God by faith," you, on the other hand, provided you can gain the honours, riches, and pleasures of this perishable scene, care little about Christ and His righteousness, or are trusting in ruinous dependence on your own; if in the humble gratitude of self-abasing, Christ-exalting faith, the Apostle exclaimed, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;" but you in the presumptuous impiety of self-boasting, Christ-denying pride, cry out, "God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are!" -or if, even while you acknowledge, that you "have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," still clinging with desperate tenacity to the most destructive delusion of self-righteousness, and determined not to give the undivided glory of your salvation to the Son of God, you look to the merits of the