with good." Try yourselves by this standard, and you will soon see what the state of your souls is before God.]
2. What shall I do to get an increase of it ?
[Many directions here might be given : but we will con- tent ourselves with only one. Nothing but love will beget love : nor will any thing but a sense of God's love to us pre- vail to create in us any real love towards our fellow-creatures : we must know what he has done in laying down his life for us, before we can feel any disposition to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if by grace we are enabled to " comprehend in some good measure the height and depth and length and breadth of Christ's love," then shall we be transformed by it into his image, yea, and " be filled with all the fulness of Gode." Contemplate then this stupendous mystery : dwell upon it, as it were, incessantly in your minds : muse upon it, till the fire of divine love kindle in your souls : and from thus " beholding his glory, you shall be changed into his image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lordf."]
e Eph. hi. 18, 19. f 2 Cor. in. 18.
1 Thess. iv. 1. We beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
OUR blessed Lord, when about to leave the world, commanded his Apostles to go and " proselyte all nations" to his religion, " teaching them at the same time to observe and do all things that he had com- manded them." Thus, in their ministrations, principle and practice were to go hand in hand. But many are disposed to separate what he has thus united ; some making the Gospel little else than a system of moral duties ; whilst others omit duty altogether, and occupy themselves entirely in establishing their own peculiar views of its doctrines. Both of these parties we conceive to be wrong. A superstructure is nothing without a foundation ; neither is a foundation any thing without a superstructure. Each indeed has its
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