be a true and lively faith, an active, energetic, vivifying principle, that lives, and moves, and has its being in every thought we conceive, in every word we utter, in every action we perform.

And while to him who seeks some rule of life, to raise a kind of superstructure on the foundation-stone of faith that is laid for him; while to that man Scripture will present a thousand such, all alike applicable to his views and his condition; the conclusion of the epistle we have this morning heard read, will afford us a lesson for imitation, than which it would be difficult to find one more useful and appropriate; let, therefore, lest haply we grieve the holy spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemp tion, let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking,

For the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

be put away from us, with all malice; let us be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven us. Now to God, &c.

SERMON XI.

THE LORD'S CONTROVERSY.

MICAH vi. 1-8.

*Hear ye now what the Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before

* To assist the reader, the whole passage, attempted to be elucidated, is prefixed as a text. This, in preaching of course would be impracticable.

thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

MICAH, the Morasthite, received this distinguishing epithet from the name of a small village, in the tribe of Benjamin, in the country of Judah, where he was:

born. He lived in troubled and tempestuous times, when the kingdom of Judah was in a state of progressive decay, and the kingdom of Israel menaced with instant dissolution. The cause of this decay, the indirect author of this approaching ruin, was the profligacy which, to an almost unheard of degree, pervaded all classes of society; indeed, to so melancholy a pitch had these excesses attained, that the only hope of reformation that yet survived, the last solitary link, that seemed, as it were, to connect the father of all living with the subjects of his peculiar regard, was either rudely blighted, or on the point of being wantonly destroyed. They who had been educated in the schools of the prophets, for, with regard to such as were destined at some future period to feel the influences of the Spirit of God, a preparatory course of life was pursued, of a nature to qualify their minds for the re