through the world and accomplish the thing whereto it was sent.

This progress of the Gospel, no power can check. Error cannot hem it in. Falsehood must fly before it and give it room. It must go to all minds, for it is a gift from God to the world.

A divine truth which would equally supply a need in all minds, no one, if he has obtained it, can feel he ought to keep to himself, or to put into the care of an exclusive sect. Thus it is with the Saviour. The Gospel lies in his mind as a grand and perfect system of truths. He cannot withhold his boon from any soul. He can neither keep it hidden in his own mind, nor give it to a few and compel them to hold it within the secret chambers of their souls or hearts. He sees a place for it, and for the whole of it, in every human heart, and therefore, he will not rest till he has filled this vacancy in every heart with its life and power.

But there is not only a force in the truths which the Saviour teaches, impelling those who hold them to utter them and make them known, but in the char. acter of Christ, in which his lessons are presented in a personal form, there is an attractive power winning the world to God. Let us contemplate this power.

The men and women who saw the Saviour when he walked the earth, but dimly discerned the beauty of his character. They yet saw enough of it to be powerfully affected. Won by his singular, his god-like appearance, by the benignity of his face, by the kindness and benevolence of his manner, they followed and gath

ered about him in crowds. Even the lunatic discovered that he was divine and felt the influence of his character.

Is the power of the Saviour's character less since he left the earth? Looking at it, we see that it is the same; that it is not less. The more we study it, the higher, the grander, the sublimer it seems to our understandings and our hearts. Good is attained,

and ever will be, in the Saviour's society. When he walked among men in his form of flesh, virtue went ⚫ out of him, and he healed all the sick who came to him. So in the present day, and forever, his virtue will go out to heal the sin-sick, and the broken-hearted. Approaching him, the morally blind will gain their sight, the morally impotent and lame will renew their strength, and leap like an hart; the crazy will come to their right mind;-all the feeble and the despairing will rejoice with health, and hope, and love. Is not the leaven of his power doing its perfect work?

I believe that what we call Christianity,- that the Word, the Character, and the Virtue of Christ, will bring to God, at length, through the way of righteous discipline, the whole human race, because I see that the whole power of this religion is applied, directed and enforced by Omnipotent Power and Infinite Love; and because the natural wants and aspirations of all men's souls will lead them to the Father.

In my view, God and men together will accomplish the great work to which we look forward with faith and hope. Men will work out, sooner or later, their

own salvation, as they are commanded to do; and God also will be their Saviour, for he will be forever in all hearts both to will and to do.

In this view I recognize both the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man; and I avoid the extreme idea, that God does every thing alone, and also the opposite idea, that man does every thing alone. In this view, too, I accept the idea that the power of God is not arbitrary, but attractive; that his government is not tyrannical, but parental; that the Saviour has come from God to assist mankind to climb to. heaven with the powers and by the directions with which they have been favored.

But a short time since, a distinguished divine, in order to show the way of grace, as the only one to get to heaven, described a very deep ravine, on the lofty edge of which, one could look off, and see out-spread, a vast and beautiful country, fruitful and sprinkled with flowers; at the bottom of which, in damps and darkness from which they desired to escape, were two men; one, laboring hard to climb with the aid only of his own hands and feet the smooth and perpendicular sides of the pit, and falling backward as often as he attempted to ascend; the other, comfortably seated in an easy chair which had been let down to him at the end of a cable, being drawn upward by a power above.

You can see in this illustration the view of the divine who invented it, but not the true illustration of the case, if we would know how men are saved from sin.

In God, all men live, and move, and have their being; and the connection of all with him is so intimate and peculiar that, while he is employing his powers and his agents to help them up, they themselves are required to labor with him also, and thus to do their part of the work.

Had the divine, whose illustration I have repeated, placed his two men, not at the bottom of the pit with smooth, perpendicular walls, but in a valley, hemmed in by mountains with rugged sides, up which the hands and the feet might climb, and the eye look forward and see at every difficult point angels beckoning to them with encouraging looks, and, near them, other ministers of God, with hands outstretched to help the feeble and wavering, and had called attention to the two men as ascending gradually and bravely over crag and jutting rock, conscious of life in God, and grateful for the help of his light, and the assistance of his messengers and servants, and not doubting that they should at length reach and roam over the broad and beautiful Paradise above-had he done this, he would have presented a picture more in harmony with Christian truth, and better suited to induce mankind to be Christians, to encourage them in the way of discipline, and to comfort them in the path of sorrow.

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DISCOURSE VI.

THE SAVIOUR'S TRIUMPH.

JOHN XIX. 30.

IT IS FINISHED.

Thus spake the Son of God upon the cross. What did he mean? Fastened as he was to the cross, and knowing that his last earthly hour had come, it is probable that he uttered these words with reference to something of very great importance. He could not in such a painful situation, in such a time of gloom, have alluded to any common thing. Conscious that he had reached the end of his life's journey, and that his spirit would soon ascend to the Father, he thoughtfully and significantly exclaimed"It is finished!" What was finished? Let us carefully consider and answer this question.

It may be said that the cruel work of his enemies was finished, that they had followed him through life, opposing and persecuting him, and, finally, had done the last and worst thing they could do in their enmity and hatred-put him to death. But this does not answer the question. I imagine the Saviour meant