is, in every instance, a breach of this fundamental law, impairs the union, and is a violation of our duty, not merely in a private capacity, but as citizens of the world. By poisoning the stream of social intercourse at its source, by impairing the stock of public confidence, it tends to a dissolution of the whole body, and involves a practice which only requires to be carried to a certain extent to destroy it altogether. It is probably owing to a confused perception of these consequences that a detected liar is usually covered with so much confusion, conscious, he scarcely knows how, that he has committed an act of outlawry, and forfeited the rights of a social being. Other vices may be more mischievous in particular instances; but this is ever of such an anti-social character, that it more completely overwhelms the perpetrator with shame and ignominy than almost any other. He can never explain his conduct in a manner completely satisfactory to others, much less to himself. He may insist on the force of the temptation arising from the magnitude of the interest at stake; he may even insist on the innocence and purity of his motives; but in vain-a feature of baseness attaches to his conduct; and a sentiment of self-degradation to his character, which it is impossible to extinguish. Thus we see the force and propriety of the consideration suggested in the text— We are members one of another.

The misery accruing to society from a wilful deviation from truth is of incalculable extent; nor is it too much to affirm that there is no comprehensive plan of mischief in which it does not form an essential ingredient. To the machinations of violence and injustice, which disturb and affect the world, it is the chief pioneer; it is indispensably requisite in order to conceal the operations designed to circumvent, and to destroy. It is the covert under which schemes the most hostile to the peace and welfare of society are daily conceived and brought to maturity. It prepares the way for the encroachments of the ambitious, for the circumvention of the unwary, and the oppression of the innocent; and but for the veil which it spreads over the designs of men, the barbarous deeds which excite horror in the recital, the scenes of devastation and blood which at this moment* overspread the earth, could have had no existence. Truth and sincerity naturally ally themselves to equity; falsehood and dissimulation to injustice; nor is it possible to conceive to what extent the latter have unhinged the frame of society, and shook the world with disorder and convulsions. The vice we are attempting to expose is, in truth, the natural ally of every criminal design, and of every base and unworthy enterprise.

Into the private intercourse of life, wherever it prevails, it infuses a mortal poison, robs it of its security, and converts it from an instrument of good into a snare. Where confidence ought to reign, it spreads suspicion and alarm; while, under the pretence of self-defence, it propagates itself. Artifice is opposed to artifice, falsehood is encountered by falsehood, till all the tender charities of life are violated. Suppose it to become universal, the intercourse of mankind

There is no date to the MS., but the sermon seems to have been written many years before Mr Hall's death, and may refer to the late dreadful war.

with each other would entirely cease, and the abodes of men be shunned with as much care as the haunts of wild beasts. But the true way to judge of the tendency of a practice is to conceive it to prevail universally, and considering it in this light, which is the only just method of viewing it, we shall perceive that no vice is more destructive in its nature to the well-being of society than the propagation of falsehood. So true is it, that we ought to be deterred from it by the consideration that we are members one of another.

2. It forms a principal part of the image of Satan. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it. He assumed the form of a serpent in Paradise in order to beguile Eve by his subtlety, and is still employed in deceiving the nations. This is the mode in which, as the god of this world, he operates on the children of disobedience. By inflaming the passions, dazzling the imagination with false appearances of good, and turning the attention from the truth, he blinds their minds, lest the light of the gospel of Christ should shine into them. Falsehood is the basis of his throne, and the chief instrument employed in propagating his empire, which is emphatically the empire of darkness. As the grace of God effects its purpose by illumination, causing the eyes of our understanding to be opened, so Satan accomplishes his by deception; the former manifests the truth, which the latter suppresses, and prevents its voice from being heard in a tumult of sensual appetites and desires. To one of these two kingdoms of light and darkness every human being belongs; nor is it difficult to determine with whom the habitual liar must be classed. He is of his father, the devil; and the works of his father he doeth. Our Lord makes no scruple in affirming that, if we imitate the works of the devil, we are his children; and the propagation of falsehood is an eminent branch of his works, who abode not in the truth.

3. Hence the practice we are reprobating is directly opposite to the character of God. He is the God who cannot lie-not from any deficiency of power (for neither truth nor falsehood have any relation to that attribute), but from the infinite rectitude of his nature, which makes it impossible for Him to act unworthy of himself.

That the Author of our nature is incapable of wilfully deceiving us, that He is the fountain of truth, not of falsehood, is the principle which alone gives validity to all his communications, without the certainty of which we are doomed, wherever we turn, to be the hopeless victims of illusion and error. It is because He is the Father of lights that we are justified in expecting truth as the result of our inquiries; our confidence, nay, even the faculties of our minds, rest on no other basis. Conscious it would be the height of impiety to ascribe falsehood to Him, we require no other proof of its criminality, since it were absurd to suppose He could approve of conduct which the holiness of his nature would not permit Him to exhibit. As He is the Supreme Standard of moral rectitude, no higher criterion of right and rong can be conceived than what arises from the agreement of an

action with his nature and character-on which account he proposes himself to our imitation. Be ye holy-for I am holy. Be ye followers of God as dear children. The highest attainment of a creature is, in compliance with the general design of the Christian religion, to become a partaker of his holiness.

The paths of dissimulation are dark and crooked, diametrically opposed to walking in the light as He is in the light, which is, however, the indispensable condition of enjoying fellowship with HIM. ****

XXXVIII.

THE REMEMBRANCE OF SIN.*

1 KINGS, xvii., 18: And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?

[Preached at the Baptist Association, held at Loughborough, June, 1818.]

It is not necessary to recapitulate at large the circumstances of this transaction. This widow had administered to the wants of Elijah. She had a son, it may be supposed an only child, and this, added to the loneliness of her condition, made him still dearer to her. When her son died, her conscience brought her sins to her remembrance. There is in the human mind a strong tendency to remember sin when we are brought by distress into immediate contact with God. When Peter's vessel began to sink with the miraculous draught of fishes, his astonishment at the miracle, the fear of death, and the presence of a Divine Being, revived within him the memory of his sins, and "he fell down at Jesus's knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" And the reason why the widow of Sarepta imagined her loss to be a direct visitation from heaven, was, no doubt, her intimate connexion with the prophet of God.

It is a fixed maxim in the government of God that there shall be, either here or hereafter, a painful remembrance of sin. It is the policy of men to forget sin, to lose its memory in amusement-to stupify the conscience-to dissipate the attention, and divert the eye of the mind from their internal state to outward prospects. Many maxims in the false philosophy of the world tend to extenuate sin, to lessen its horror, and to diminish the apprehension of the wrath of God The palliative epithets given to vice-vivacity, spirit-names allied to virtue, have a dangerous effect upon the mind, and prevent it from taking to itself the full shame and penitence of sin. God is determined to counteract this; He has determined that it shall be adequately felt and expressed. It cannot be that rebellion should break

Reported in the London Christian Instructer, 1822, conducted by the Rev. Dr. Redford and the Rev. W. Orme.

out in any part of the Divine dominions, and not be remembered and repented of. It is unnatural that so great a source of evil and disorder should be forgotten. God has provided a remedy, but He has connected with it the memory and repentance of sin.

The subject may suggest to us several important considerations. And,

1st. How does God bring it to pass that sin is remembered even in the present life? Men are very apt to forget what they have done, but not what they have suffered. There is a general tendency in affliction to remind men of sin; it bears the evident marks of the Divine anger, of the frown of God. When men have lost the remembrance of their transgressions, God, by affliction, brings it back to their consciences. Twenty years had elapsed since the brethren of Joseph had torn him from his father's arms, and sold him into Egyptian bondage; but it was not forgotten, it was written in the Divine book, and that very brother whom they had sold to slavery, but who reigned in all the splendour of sovereign majesty, was made the providential instrument of awakening their memory and their remorse. "And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them, saying, Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold also, his blood is required." The chastisement of Divine Providence is intentional; it has a purpose-it is the handwriting on the wall against us, and it has a salutary tendency to soften and to subdue our pride and hardness. When sinners are in health and prosperity, they are careless and high-minded; but when they are afflicted, we find it easy to convince them of their sin; they are humbled in spirit, and their hearts are tender.

2dly. There is a peculiar tendency in affliction to revive the recollection of sin. There is a law of retaliation in the providence of God, that adapts the visitation to the crime. When Adam fell, he had abused the fertility of Paradise; and he was doomed to the barrenness of a world which brought forth spontaneously "thorns and thistles," but corn "with the sweat of his brow:" God took from him the knowledge of good, and suffered him to retain only the knowledge of evil. Adoni-bezek acknowledged this when the children of Israel" pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me." When Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord, he slew him for this reason: "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." When Abimelech, the illegitimate son of Gideon, slew his brethren, Jotham the youngest escaped; and the curse which he pronounced upon Abimelech and the men of Shechem was exactly fulfilled. "God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abime

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lech that the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them; and upon the men of Shechem which aided him in the killing of his brethren." Fire," literally, came out from Abimelech and devoured the men of Shechem;" and he himself shortly after perished in an assault upon Thebez, probably the tributary or ally of Shechem.

"Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren: And all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham, the son of Jerubbaal." The people of Israel were not content to serve the Lord joyfully in their own land; and they were therefore compelled to serve their enemies in straitness and in exile. This law of retaliation is not confined to the enemies of God. David was punished for the murder of Uriah, by the curse that the sword should not depart from his house forever. When the Jews persecuted and crucified the Messiah, they did it under the pretext that they feared the Romans. "If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation." And God punished them by suffering those very Romans to exterminate the Jewish nation, and to carry away the remnant of the people from their native place.

3dly. Though men may not be brought to a sense of sin by any affecting event in this life, they will infallibly be reminded of it in the life to come. This recollection will meet them at the hour of death, it will weigh upon their consciences, and agitate them with the most terrible anticipations. But it will rise in all its horror at the day of the resurrection-of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God The prisoners at our assizes, when they heard the sound of the trumpet that announced the entrance of the judge, remembered their crimes; they retraced all the circumstances which increased their guilt; and when they stood before the court for judgment, instead of feeling any gratification in the sight of a large assembly, of the preparations for the ceremony, and of the decent solemnity which in this country always attends the administration of justice, they were alive only to their own situation-they felt that the general attention was fixed upon them as an awful and shameful spectacle-they thought upon their doom, and every other feeling was absorbed in the sense of shame, and the fear of approaching punishment. Thus, but in an infinitely higher degree, at the last day men will rise to the memory of their sins; they will revise the record of their conscience, and compare it with the book of judgment. The magnificent scenery will not attract, but appal them; they will think only of their sin-they will dwell only upon that which must descend with them to the shades of eternal death; no other thought will occupy their mind; it is written there by the finger of an avenging God, and they will remember it forever.

There are three distinct reflections which will then press upon them with aggravating weight.