speak like a Boanerges, for it is to you a well-known truth, that without God, without Christ, "strangers from the commonwealth of Israel," your portion must be among the damned the fiends-the tortured-the shrieking ghosts-the wandering souls who find no rest "On waves of burning brimstone tossed “The wrath to come!" "The wrath to come!" to come!" "The wrath But, beloved Christian brother, wherefore dost thou fear to die? Come! let me take thy hand! "To you and me by grace 'tis given To know the Saviour's precious name; Do you know that heaven is just across that narrow stream? Are you afraid to plunge in and swim across? Do you fear to be drowned? I feel the bottom: it is good. Dost thou think thou shalt sink? Hear the voice of the Spirit! "Fear not, I am with thee; be not dismayed, I am thy God: when thou passest through the river, I will be with thee, and the floods shall not overflow thee." Death is the gate of endless joy; and dost thou dread to enter there? What! fear to be emancipated from corruption? Oh! say not so; but rather gladly lay down and sleep in Jesus, and be blessed. I have finished expounding my subject. There is only one question I want to ask of you before you pass out of those doors. Do you seriously and solemnly believe that you belong to the "beloved" here mentioned? I may be impertinent in asking such a question; I have been accused of that before now, but I have never denied it. I rather take the credit of it than not. But, seriously and solemnly, I ask you, Do you know yourselves to be among the beloved? And if it happens that you want a test, allow me to give you three tests very briefly, and I have done. It has been said that there are three kinds of preachers-doctrinal preachers, experimental preachers, and practical preachers. Now, I think, there are three things that make up a Christian-true doctrine, real experience, and good practice. Now, then, as to your doctrine. You may tell whether you are the Lord's beloved partly by that. Some think it matters not what a man believes. Excuse me: truth is always precious, and the least atom of truth is worth searching out. Now-a-days the sects do not clash so much as they did. Perhaps that is good; but there is one evil about it. People do not read their Bibles so much as they did. They think we are all right. Now, I believe we may be all right in the main; but we can not be all right where we contradict one another, and it becomes every man to search the Bible to see which is right. I am not afraid to submit my Calvinism, or my doctrine of believer's baptism, to the searching of the Bible. A learned lord, an infidel, once said to Whitefield, "Sir, I am an infidel, I do not believe the Bible, but if the Bible be true you are right, and your Arminian opponents are wrong. If the Bible be the word of God, the doctrines of grace are true;" adding, that if any man would grant him the Bible to be the truth, he would challenge him to disprove Calvinism. The doctrines of original sin, election, effectual calling, final perseverance, and all those great truths which are called Calvinism-though Calvin was not the author of them, but simply an able writer and preacher upon the subject are, I believe, the essential doctrines of the gospel that is in Jesus Christ. Now, I do not ask you whether you believe all this-it is possible you may not; but I believe you will before you enter heaven. I am persuaded, that as God may have washed your hearts, he will wash your brains before you enter heaven. He will make you right in your doctrines. But I must inquire whether you read your Bibles. I am not finding fault with you, this morning, for differing from me; may be wrong; but I want to know whether you search the Scriptures, to find what is truth. And, if you are not a reader of the Bible, if you take doctrines second-hand, if you go to chapel, and say, "I do not like that :" what matters your not liking it, provided it is in the Bible? Is it biblical truth, or is it not? If it is God's truth, let us have it exalted. It may not suit you; but let me remind you, that the truth that is in I Jesus never was palatable to carnal men, and, I believe, never will be. The reason you love it not, is because it cuts too. much at your pride; it lets you down too low. Search yourselves, then, in doctrine. Then take care that you remember the experimental test. I am afraid there is very little experimental religion among us; but where there is true doctrine, there ought always to be a vital experience. Sirs, try yourselves by the experi mental test. Have you ever had an experience of your wretchedness, of your depravity, your inability, your death in sin? Have you ever felt life in Christ, an experience of the ight of God's countenance, of wrestling with corruption? Have you had a grace-given, Holy Ghost-implanted experience of a communion with Christ? If so, then you are right on the experimental test. "Faith And, to conclude, take care of the practical test. without works is dead, being alone." He that walketh in sin is a child of the devil; and he that walketh in righteousness is a child of light. Do not think, because you believe the right doctrines, therefore you are right. There are many that believe right, who act wrong; and they perish. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." I have done. Now, let me beseech you, by the frailty of your own lives; by the shortness of time; by the dreadful realities of eternity; by the sins you have committed; by the pardon that you need; by the blood and wounds of Jesus; by his second coming to judge the world in righteousness; by the glories of heaven; by the awful horrors of hell; by time; by eternity; by all that is good; by all that is sacred;-let me beg of you, as you love your own souls, to search and see whether you are among the beloved, to whom he giveth sleep. God bless you. SERMON IV. THE SIN OF UNBELIEF. 'And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, beh: ld, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof”—2 KINGS, vü. 19. ONE wise man may deliver a whole city; one good man may be the means of safety to a thousand others. The holy ones are "the salt of the earth," the means of the preservation of the wicked. Without the godly as a conserve, the race would be utterly destroyed. In the city of Samaria there was one righteous man-Elisha, the servant of the Lord. Piety was altogether extinct in the court. The king was a sinner of the blackest dye; his iniquity was glaring and infamous. Jehoram walked in the ways of his father Ahab, and made unto himself false gods. The people of Samaria were fallen like their mon arch; they had gone astray from Jehovah; they had forsaken the God of Israel; they remembered not the watchword of Jacob, "The Lord thy God is one God ;" and in wicked idolatry they bowed before the idols of the heathens, and there. fore the Lord of Hosts suffered their enemies to oppress them until the curse of Ebal was fulfilled in the streets of Samaria. for "the tender and delicate woman who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness" had an evil eye to her own children, and devoured her offspring by reason of fierce hunger. (Deuteronomy, xxviii. 56-58.) In this awful extremity the one holy man was the medium of salvation. The one grain of salt preserved the entire city; the one warrior for God was the means of the deliverance of the whole beleaguered multitude. For Elisha's sake, the Lord sent the promise, that the next day, food, which could not be obtained at any price, should be had at the cheapest possible rate, at the very gates of Samaria. We may picture the joy of the multitude when first the seer uttered this prediction. They knew him to be a prophet of the Lord; he had divine credentials; all his past prophecies had been fulfilled. They knew that he was a man sent of God, and uttering Jehovah's message. Surely the monarch's eyes would glisten with de light, and the emaciated multitude would leap for joy, at the prospect of so speedy a release from famine. "To-morrow," would they shout, "to-morrow our hunger shall be over, and we shall feast to the full !" However, the lord on whom the king leaned, expressed his disbelief. We hear not that any of the common people, the plebeians, ever did so; but an aristocrat did it. Strange it is, that God has seldom chosen the great men of this world. High places and faith in Christ do seldom agree. This great man said, "Impossible!" and, with an insult to the prophet, he added, "If the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be ?" His sin lay in the fact, that after repeated seals of Elisha's ministry, he yet disbelieved the assurances uttered by the prophet on God's behalf. He had doubtless seen the marvelous defeat of Moab; he had been startled at tidings of the resurrection of the Shunamite's son; he knew that Elisha had revealed Benhadad's secrets and smitten his marauding hosts with blindness; he had seen the bands of Syria decoyed into the heart of Samaria; and he probably knew the story of the widow, whose oil filled all the vessels, and redeemed her sons; at all events, the cure of Naaman was common conversation at court; and yet, in the face of all this accumulated evidence, in the teeth of all these credentials of the prophet's mission, he yet doubted, and insultingly told him that heaven must become an open casement, ere the prom ise could be performed. Whereupon God pronounced his doom by the mouth of the man who had just now proclaimed the promise, "Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." And Providence-which always fulfills prophecy just as the paper takes the stamp of the type-destroyed the man. Trodden down in the streets of Samaria, he per |