acceptance ? " and in answering this important question, there are two things against which you must guard with equal care, namely, a self-righteous dependence on your own works, and a presumptuous hope of salvation, while you live in any known sin, whether of commission or of omission. Nothing but Christ's obedience unto death can form a proper ground of your hope : yet nothing but a life wholly devoted to God can evidence your interest in Christ. If your faith be productive of good works, it is lively, and saving ; if not, it is dead, worthless, delusive. Seek then a humble faith in order to a holy life. If ye will offer sacrifices, let them be " those of a broken and contrite spirit :" if ye will " give a first-born for your transgression," let it be God's First-born, yea, his only-begotten Son. But never forget that your duties to God and to your neighbour are of equal and immutable obligation ; and that according to your performance or neglect of them you will be acquitted or condemned at the last day.]
Micah vii. 7. I will look unto the Lord; I ivill wait for the God of my salvation : my God will hear me.
IF we mark the discriminating character of the Lord's people, we shall find, that from the beginning of the world it has consisted in this : The ungodly "call not upon Goda;" but the "godly are a people near unto himb." Abraham, the father of the faith- ful, built an altar to God in every place where he abode. Moses, David, and all the saints, familiarized themselves with God, if I may so speak ; and carried their every want to him, as their Father and their Friend. The Prophet Micah, in his own conduct, well illustrates this. The awful state of the world around him he declares in very pathetic terms ; cry- ing, in the view of it, " Woe is mec!" And having represented this with the fidelity that became him, he declares, with no common measure of compla- cency, the manner in which he proposed to occupy his mind : " Therefore I will look unto the Lord ; I will wait for the God of my salvation : my God will
a Ps. xiv. 4. b Ps. cxlviii. 14. c ver. 1.