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comprehensive the object, the greater effort of the Will is requisite to embrace it. Hereby we may be assisted in some degree to conceive how the influences of the Spirit should be of such momentous power in the work of our Faith, in producing it from the very first, and afterward in nourishing and maturing it. Were Faith merely an act of the Understanding, it would lie without that region which is the peculiar sphere of the Spirit. At least His ordinary influences, those which are promist to every believer, and in which whosoever is baptized into the name of Christ has a share, do not seem to extend to the illumination of the Understanding; except so far as the Understanding is necessarily elevated and enlightened by the purification of the Heart, and the sanctification of the Will, by a singleness of view in pursuit of truth, an inward harmony with it, and an unhesitating readiness to adopt it. So far however as Faith is a spiritual act, so far as it is the act of the Will, which Christ came to redeem from the bondage of the flesh, we may feel assured that, in every act of spiritual Faith, in every act by which we evince a desire to become partakers in Christ's redeeming grace, to shake off the yoke of corruption, and to strive after the glorious liberty of the children of God, in every such act, we may feel assured, the Spirit of God will be working along with our spirits.

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Moreover a right insight into the nature of Faith, as depending far more on the Will, than on the Understanding, will teach us the groundlessness and fallaciousness of a proposition, which has often been promulgated with great pretensions to philosophical candour and freedom of thought, that no man is accountable for his belief; for that it does not depend upon himself, but wholly on the

evidence by which he has been led to form and entertain it. Sad would it be to think, that Truth is thus to vary with the accidents of condition and circumstance, nay, of chance and caprice in the mind of the receiver: sad would it be to think that there is no better and surer answer than this, which man is bound to render to Pilate's question; sad, that each man should return a different answer, and that there should be no criteria for deciding amongst them; sad, that the crowning result of all knowledge should be to run races blindfold in Chaos. But a very slight attention to the processes of our own minds, to the growth of our own opinions, - nay, even to the manner in which we arrive at our conclusions with regard to any one particular point, though no more than a mere question of fact, might convince us that there is hardly anything wherein our volition exercises so decisive an influence, as in this very matter of the formation of our opinion and belief. Or we need only look at any controversy in which men's feelings, as political partisans, are engaged, to see how persons equally discreet and sagacious, and fancying themselves equally impartial, will habitually frame totally opposite judgements. For in every practical question the Will gives the mind its bias; and the Will is the archsophist, and is ever attended by a swarm of lesser sophists in its train. It in great measure determines the degree of attention which we bestow on the several parts of contradictory evidence, the weight which we attach to them. We dwell almost unconsciously on that which favours and flatters our prepossessions; we welcome such arguments like old friends, and entertain them with openhearted hospitality; while it requires no little effort and struggle not to turn away and close our doors against that which

thwarts or contradicts us. Hence even for our intellectual judgements we may justly be held responsible; the more so the more intimately those judgements are connected with our practical lives. What then? Is this warping bent, this squint of our Understandings, to be corrected and to pass away all at once, the moment we begin to employ them in the examination of religious doctrines? Are there no prepossessions in the heart, to rise up against these truths, and to draw us away from them? Do not our sins shrink from them? do not our passions scoff at them? Has the intellect forgotten its craft, and cast away its snares? has it escaped from the entanglement of its own sophistries? Is it set free from the slough, which confined it to crawl along the earth? Is the mystery of the Cross no longer a stumbling-block to the Jew, no longer foolishness to the Greek? Yet, shallow and baseless as this notion is, I doubt not there are many in these days, who buoy themselves up in their carelessness about their own Faith, and about the Faith of their brethren, by crying out that no man can be held accountable for his Faith; for that we believe what we believe, through the compulsion which the evidence set before us exercises on our Understanding, according to laws beyond our controll; that we can neither alter the character of the evidence, nor its power over our minds; and consequently that, if we go wrong, we cannot help it. Such a doctrine, even with regard to mere intellectual belief, implies the barest rankest necessarianism: and when applied to Faith, in its higher more spiritual sense, it is utterly untenable, except in connexion with a scheme of opinions which undermines all morality, and would blot out the eternal distinction between right and wrong. It is a duty of charity indeed to

refrain from pronouncing harsh judgement on the Faith of our neighbours; seeing that we cannot look into their hearts, and ascertain how far they may be truly accountable for it, that we cannot know the manifold hindrances outward and inward they may have had to contend against: nor can we tell whether there may not be a living root of Faith striking deep underground, even where as yet there is little show of life aboveground. Therefore is it reasonable and just, that we should refrain from condemning others for errours in Faith; provided that this toleration do not slacken our efforts to deliver them from their errours, lest perchance they should be accountable for them; as, if we do not endeavour to check them, we ourselves at least shall be. But into our own hearts we can look,-not indeed through and through them,-not so as to unravel all the network of falsehood and selfdeceit in which they are entangled,—not so as to pierce into all the hollow caverns of vanity and pride, into which our Consciences will skulk: to see all this we need to have our eyes purged and strengthened by the Spirit of God. So far however we can look into ourselves, as to discern much, very much that is wrong, much that is frail, much that is bloated, much emptiness, much self-indulgence, much sloth: and on this point I dare appeal to you all, confident that there is no one among you who will presume to assert, that he has done all he might have done, all he ought to have done,-might I not say, who has done a thousandth part of what he might and ought to have done?-in order to attain to a right faith in the Gospel. What may be the case with others, we know not: but with regard to ourselves, every one of us must confess, Verily on this point I am guilty: verily I am accountable

for my Faith, for its wants, for its weakness, for its

errours.

I have dwelt much longer than I had intended on this fundamental question of the practical nature of Faith; because the more one examines it, the more momentous its importance is discovered to be; and at every step some new mischievous fallacy or delusion starts up, springing out of errours with regard to it. We saw, from a brief glance at the history of the Church, how a lifeless conception of Faith led to torpour in the Church, and how the revival of the true idea of Faith was the forerunner and a main agent in its regeneration. The men of God in those days knew what Faith was. They lookt into their hearts, and found it there. They knew its lifegiving sustaining power. They knew how, when it walks abroad over the earth, it goes on conquering, and still to conquer. But when the struggle was over, when the victory was gained, doctrines after a time again became a matter of mere speculation: yea, alas! even Christianity itself was often regarded and discust as a matter of mere speculation; as though the eternal Son of God had come down from heaven for no worthier purpose than that men should sharpen their wits by disputing about him. In this manner it again grew to be held that Faith is little more than the assent of the Understanding to the truths proposed to it. And still, even in these days, two opposite errours with regard to the nature of Faith are widely spread, by both of which the souls of men are equally drawn away from the hallowing power of the Gospel. One of these is the Antinomian errour; which, bewildering and blinding itself with fantastical extravagant notions about the omnipotence of bare Faith, severs Faith from that holiness of conduct which is