2. The necessity of abounding in it more and more —
[We have observed, that men cannot continue stationary in the divine life : we must either advance or decline. Now it is not at our first conversion only that the words of our text are applicable to us, but at every period of our lives. The longer we have professed ourselves the Lord's servants, the more necessity there is for firmness and decision. To become lukewarm, is the worst of states, the most offensive to God, and the most injurious to ourselves*^. We have this only alternative, either to maintain a warfare against all the ene- mies of Christ, or to make Christ himself our enemy : and can any one doubt which he should prefer ? If we provoke him to anger, " will our hands be strong in the day that he shall deal with us?" Let us then "fight a good fight, and quit ourselves like men:" then shall we "be approved of him who has chosen us to be soldiers," and reign with him in glory for evermore.]
1' Rev. iii. 17, 18.
Matt. xii. 31. / say u?ito you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall he forgiven unto men : hut the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not he forgiven unto men.
^' THE sins of men have, in all the ages of the world, Been the means and occasions of displaying the Divine goodness. It is through the fall of the first Adam, and the crucifixion of Christ, the second Adam, that we attain the knowledge of God's mercy, and see how the exercise of it can consist with the rights of justice. The wickedness of the Pharisees, to whom the words of our text were addressed, was exceeding heinous : yet was it an occasion of manifesting the most un- bounded compassion of our Lord. He had cast out a devil, and thereby not only conveyed a rich blessing to the person whom he had healed, but had given an irrefragable proof of his own divine mission. But the Pharisees, blinded by prejudice, imputed his miracle to a confederacy with the devil. Our Lord, instead of giving them up, as he might have justly done, to judicial blindness and impenitence, condescended meekly to reason with them on the subject, and the;