be viewed, not only as a direction how we may please God, but also as a test by which we may examine ourselves and determine whether we are now actually pleasing him or not.

There is, however, one great difficulty in the way of such examination, a difficulty which no abundance or minuteness of direction, no plainness of language, can entirely overcome. The examination is not to be confined to our outward actions, but must extend to the inward principles which are active in our souls. God searcheth the heart and reins; all his service, as well as his worship, must be paid in spirit and in truth; and he utterly abominates the most painful attempts to obtain his favour, if the heart does not accompany and sanctify them. Now it is a difficult task to gauge and estimate aright the heart. It requires serious and deep meditation, great firmness and impartiality, a clear and well-informed understanding, exercised to discern the difference between outward seeming and inward reality. You will at once perceive the difficulty by an easy example. Here we are all assembled for the same purpose; every member of the congregation, I am happy to bear testimony, conducts himself with the same decency and the same appearance of respect and attention yet who can doubt that there is a vast difference as to what has passed and is passing in the soul of each of us? Has each one, think you, entered the house of God with the same pious determination to render a reasonable service, and not the

sacrifice of fools? have all alike bowed their hearts at God's footstool in humility and penitence? have all with equal earnestness petitioned for pardon and the gift of the purifying Spirit, believing that they shall be heard and answered through the mediation and for the sake of Jesus? Though we cannot enter into any thoughts but our own, and therefore must not presume to judge and condemn any individual, yet it is no breach of charity to conclude that among us, as in ancient Israel, there are those who draw near with their mouths, and honour God with their lips, yet have removed their heart far from him. The same doubt, which cleaves to the outward act of prayer, applies with equal force to almsgiving, and to all the good works of a Christian life. We cannot say that a man, who has done acts agreeable to the commands of God, is on that account undoubtedly in a state of acceptance. He may still be an hypocrite, and he who seeth not as man seeth, may appoint him his portion with the unbelievers'.

Now these considerations point out the reason why St. Paul, when reckoning up the fruits of the Spirit, does not mention specific outward actions, but sends us for the tests of our regenerate state to our own heart, and bids us inquire there. Are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance," its inmates? He adopts a different plan when enumerating the works of the

1 Matt. xxiv. 51. Luke xii. 46.

flesh. For adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings for almost all these are plain and manifest acts, visible to the senses of mankind. He, who lives in the practice of any of them, gives an indisputable proof that he is the bond-slave of Satan, tyrannised over by the corruption of the flesh; under no case can such deeds originate from holy principles; we determine their fleshly origin without the possibility of error. Therefore St. Paul specifies works or outward actions of sin, and broadly says, that "they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." But here he stops. He does not draw up a contrasted account of religious actions, and promise heaven to the performance of these. He does not say that he who frequents church and sacrament, who gives much alms, who keeps his body in temperance, soberness, and chastity, shall assuredly go to heaven. We know that a man will not go to heaven, unless he practise all outward acts of religion; but heaven is not appended to the performance of them. If it were, hypocritical pretence would flourish ten thousand times more than it now unhappily abounds. Who would refuse to pay any fixed price for heaven, if he were sure of getting it by the payment? who would refuse, I will not say, to attend church, to

1 Gal. v. 19-21.

abstain from uncleanness and intemperance merely, but to punish his body with stripes and tortures, like the poor misled Indian, or to give all his substance to the poor, provided he was certain that by these acts he should purchase immeasurable and endless happiness? St. Paul supposes the case in much more energetic language than I can devise. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity," or love, "it profiteth me nothing'.

Certain heavenly dispositions then are wrought in the soul of Christ's people by his Spirit, which makes them his temple. We must therefore diligently inquire whether we possess these. And the method of making this difficult, yet necessary inquiry, is at the same time wisely pointed out in the text by the use of the word Fruit. Love, joy, peace, and the other Christian graces, are the Fruit of the Spirit ; that is, they produce the fruit of good actions through the power of the Spirit. St. Paul does not so direct us to search our hearts as to neglect inquiry into the words and works which proceed from the heart. These are its fruits. The same doctrine is expressed somewhat more plainly in the Epistle to the Ephesians. "The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth 2." Had we been taught that inward dispositions would be rewarded with heaven, without respect to the fruits they produce, St.

Paul would have opposed the great object for which Christ has purified and strengthened us, that we should be "zealous of good works." Had he on the other hand been silent as to the inward principles which produce our works, we should have rested satisfied with the praise and opinion of men, without probing our own hearts, and taxing conscience to sift them to the uttermost. He has then left us the most useful, most compleat, and wisest direction for self-examination that can be devised. We We may not build our hope that we are treading the path to heaven on the pious and charitable works we perform, be it never so abundantly, unless we can also trace them to the Christian tempers which are enumerated as their fountain and cause. On the other hand, we must not rest contented with the contemplation of holy and pure desires in the soul, be they never so warm, unless their reality be fully proved and justified by those holy and charitable works, in which God has prepared us for walking.

As then our salvation under God's grace depends on the existence in our hearts and the exemplification in our lives of the dispositions, which St. Paul has here enumerated, we cannot too frequently or too closely meditate on them. To err respecting them on the part of the Minister and the People is to renew the sad spectacle of the blind leading the

Tit. ii. 14.