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heart, and a reliance on God, closing his life in agony under the triumph of malice, and then ascending to glory, is the most omnipotent Gospel which was ever preached to man. Its echoes

sounded forth from the hills of Judea, and still are ringing round the world. They touch a chord in the human heart of sympathy, and consolation, which wakens all of virtuous energy there is in the soul. The life of Christ is a solution of the high and otherwise inexplicable mysteries of this dark and uncertain world. When exhibited to mankind as he went about doing good, or hanging upon the cross, he becomes a source of moral and spiritual power to the Gospel, which no mind can estimate, and no tongue can tell. He draws "all men unto” him by the cords of love.

The third source of moral and spiritual power in the Gospel is the teaching of Jesus. I mean its superhuman wisdom, its intuitive certainty and truth, by which it carries irresistible conviction to the human mind and heart. The Gospel in this sense is the wisdom of God, and therefore, the power of God. This is the great and universal evidence by which it is ever accompanied. carries conviction because it finds a witness in the inner man of its eternal truth. It was this coincidence, which, when Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and a judgment to come made Felix tremble, the judge clothed in purple before the prisoner in chains. He found the Gospel was in him before, and the reasoning of Paul revived

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the crushed authority of his own conscience. The Gospel without, responded to by conscience within, was too much for the hardened Roman, and he trembled and was overcome with fear. So is it ever. The moral evidence of the Gospel strikes many hearts, even of those whose understandings its outward testimony fails to convince, and who never submit their lives to its power. And thou

sands of the human race, like the rude officers of the Sanhedrim, quail before the humble Nazarene, and confess that "never man spake like this man."

The third doctrine to which the Gospel owes its moral and spiritual power, is the offer of mercy from God, of the pardon and remission of sin, expressly and explicitly made to mankind through Jesus Christ, on condition of true repentance and reformation. This was, it is true, to a certain extent, the doctrine of Judaism and of natural religion. Yet through them it does not come with that directness and power with which it comes by an express ambassador and mediator, from heaven proclaiming, "Repent that your sins may be blotted out." This makes certain the great motive for the exercise of repentance, the certainty of its efficacy and its acceptableness with God. All men feel that they need this pardon, for all men feel that they have sinned and come short. The overtures of mercy made under such affecting circumstances, as the suffering life, and bloody, painful death of Christ, are calculated to make a powerful impres

sion upon the world. This is what gives power to the ministers of reconciliation, when they stand up and proclaim, "that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;" and when they as "ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech" men through them, they "pray" men "in Christ's stead," to be "reconciled to God."

But the grand doctrine of Christianity both for power and importance is the resurrection of the dead. As it is the corner stone on which the entire system rests, so it is the animating principle which breathes a living energy into the whole, and fixes it in the soul of man as its great and commanding motive. Deny this or omit it, and Unity or Trinity, purchased or free forgiveness, predestination or self-determined choice, or any other doctrine, or negative of doctrine, becomes matter of entire indifference. This life is an enigma utterly beyond the powers of man to explain. Human wisdom in this case concentrates itself into this brutish proposition, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Establish this doctrine and the brute disappears, and the angel rises in its place. Man from a mere animal becomes a spiritual being. No longer absorbed in the frivolities about him, he listens to the distant roar of the ocean of eternity, and he is still. 'He becomes a thoughtful, intellectual, conscientious being; he awakes from the lethargy, the moral death of vicious indulgence, to a life of righteousness, and peace, and joy.

For in the fifth and last place, the resurrection makes sure the most powerful doctrine which can operate on the will of man, the judgment to come. That judgment then becomes certain, because our own consciences have condemned us already. The judgment of conscience we cannot reverse, nor change, nor resist. What appears to us now in our character and conduct unworthy and wicked, will appear so then, and in ten-fold clearness in the light of eternity: Sin, doing wrong, becomes a word of more portentous meaning than when pent up in the narrow confines of this world. Eternity with all its retributions is brought to bear on the present life. And where is the wretch so degraded whose base schemes are not sometimes arrested, whose outstretched hand does not sometimes pause from its purpose, at the thought of that judgment, which Christ has pictured among the floating images of a coming eternity?

These are the doctrines, the simple but sublime doctrines of the apostles, and not the petty dogmas of contending sects, which are Christianity, and which constitute the moral and spiritual power of the Gospel. Then, as now, they were the efficient means of the sanctification and salvation of man, and the moral regeneration of the world. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

LECTURE XII.

WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHRISTIAN.

"And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." Acts, xi. 26.

WHAT is it to be a Christian? What is it necessary for a man to believe, and what is it necessary for him to practise in order to be a Christian, and as such entitled to the name, privileges, and hopes of a Christian? It is my design in this discourse to promote the cause of piety and charity. Of piety, by leading each one to self-examination and earnest self-improvement, and of charity, by giving you the scriptural and reasonable standard for judging of the Christian character and rights of others. I address those, who have a sincere desire to know the truth, and to embrace it, who wish to understand their own rights, and while they maintain them are equally willing to learn and respect the rights of others. I do not address that class of persons, who would give or withhold the Christian name, just as they thought it expedient, in order to produce popular effect, to raise up one sect and pull down another, to deter the multitude from fair and impartial examination, by hard names and odious imputations. Such men I do not address, for light,

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