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from that best of motives, as well as most pleasurable of sensations, genuine unadulterated gratitude.

This then is the temper and genius by which the real Christian endeavours to serve his Maker; this is what revelation means when it instructs us to glorify him; that is, to do every thing with that great end only in view, and to assimilate ourselves as much as human infirmity will suffer us to the Divine Nature; to be pure as God is pure, holy as he is holy: pure and holy in the same manner, though we know it is impossible to be holy and pure in the same degree. To consider ourselves as dear unto him, because restored and redeemed by him; which consideration, authorized by this and innumerable other passages of holy Scripture, must be the surest means of securing us from that outward defilement with which the sins of impurity and intemperance affect the body, and that inward one by which the violent and brutish passions debase the soul: but this is not all, it will be a constant, effectual, and active spur to our ambition, that heavenly ambition which stimulates us to proceed from grace to grace, till we attain the exalted summit of Christian perfection.

He who aspires to such an exalted character will have a perfect conviction that he cannot perform this duty of glorifying God, if he ever submits to become the servant of man, in the sense which my former discourse was

employed in explaining; nor will he be less convinced if he suffers his own inordinate passions to get the ascendant over him, which St. Paul in this chapter cautions him to avoid, that he will be equally incapacitated from performing it. He must know and believe, that God dwelleth in him, and that he is the temple of his Holy Spirit, before he can presume that he performs this duty acceptably. These are strong terms, but they are St. Paul's, and they may be understood in a manner divested of all enthusiasm, and as not implying any miraculous inward feeling of the fact (a sensation frequently fallacious, always to be suspected); for to know this truth he has only to know that he has sincerely repented of his sins, and that he stedfastly purposes to avoid them in future. These are acts of the will, previous to any expectation of divine grace, and without which we cannot hope to be endowed with such a blessing; but where this will operates we have full assurance from revelation that the Holy Spirit will co-operate with it, so that we may perfectly know that God dwelleth in us; that we are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that therefore we are capable of glorifying God in our body and our spirit, which are God's.

ON

CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM.

SERMON IX.

Romans ix. 3.

I COULD WISH THAT MYSELF WERE ACCURSED FROM CHRIST, FOR MY BRETHREN MY KINSMEN ACCORDING TO THE FLESH.

Ir is difficult, perhaps, to determine precisely what the Apostle here means by the terms, ACCURSED FROM CHRIST; we may, however, be assured that they do not necessarily imply absolute and final reprobation; neither the circumstances of the case, nor the character of the writer require us so to interpret the expression. It is probable that he meant, by thus speaking, to declare he was willing to give up the peculiar and extraordinary privilege conferred upon him, of having been miraculously converted to the Christian faith, and rely on the uncovenanted mercy of the Almighty for a season, if, by such a temporary resignation, all his countrymen might become converts, and be put instantly into possession of those inestimable blessings which, by that conversion, they would be enabled to procure. St. Paul, we know, had been a zealous persecutor of the church of Christ;

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