ready even to " lay down our lives for the brethren." It does not call us to believe in Christ, in order that we may afterwards indulge in sin ; but that our hearts may be purified by faith, and that we may be transformed into the very image of our God.
See then who are the true Antinomians: not they who urge you to come to Christ for life and salvation, but they who tell you that to be honest and just, and sober and charitable, is all that is required of you. With such persons it is common to quote those words of Balaam, " Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." But they quite forget the walking humbly with God; and then confine the doing justice and loving mercy to a few outward acts. Give the full scope to these words, and they do contain the whole of our duty: but we must omit no part of them : nor must we reduce any part to the puny standard of Pharisaic morality. Look at Christ and his Apostles, and there we see the morality which we are to aspire after. Those who are inquiring after Christ, do well to ask, What shall I do? but those who profess to have believed in Christ, must rather ask, "What do I more than others e?]
c Matt. v. 47.
Luke iii. 19, 20. Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.
THE inspired volume, when considered only as containing a history of other ages and other nations, is read rather for the purpose of informing the mind, than of benefiting the heart ; and hence it produces comparatively little effect even on those who are most conversant with its contents. But. the true light in which it should be regarded is, as a history of man, to whatever age or nation he may belong. It is a mir- ror, that reflects the human heart in all its dispositions, and in all its actings : and, when viewed in this light, it acquires a ten-fold greater importance, because it exhibits us to ourselves, and makes us the actors in all that is done.
In reading an account of John the Baptist, and of