[Whatever attainments you may have made, you must still be aspiring after higher degrees of lovee. Look at him then, not only as the ground of your hopes, but as the pattern for your imitation. Trace him in all the labours of his love: trace him from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven : trace him in all that he either did or suffered : and study to resemble him in the whole of his spirit and deportment. In all his labours " God smelled a sweet savour ;" even as he had done in those offerings and sacrifices by which Christ had been shadowed forthf: and though your labours of love can never resemble his, as making an atonement for sin, they shall, like his, come up for a memorial before God, and be accepted as well-pleasing in his sights]
e 1 Thess. iv. 9, 10. f Gen. viii. 21. Lev. i. 9.
s Heb. vi. 10. and xiii. 16.
Eph. v. 5 — 7. This ye know, that no whoremonger, nor un- clean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of dis- obedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
NEVER can we be wrong in bearing our testi- mony against sin. As for those who, from a zeal for the Gospel, pass over subjects of this kind as legal, we cannot but think them grievously mistaken . for St. Paul, whose love to the Gospel was so ardent, that " he counted all things but dung and dross for the knowledge of it," was inferior to no man in incul- cating the necessity of holiness, or in denouncing the judgments of God against indulged sin. The words before us amply illustrate this : for, specifying parti- cular sins, which would surely prove fatal to all who lived in them, he made them the subject of & faithful appeal, and of a most solemn warning to the Church of God in all ages.
Were we to speak of this subject under distinct, heads, those which we have just mentioned would afford an easy arrangement : but on such a subject as