go and offer these things without a renovated heart-without love to him-without having obeyed his first commandment, can they be a substitute for such a renovated heart? Can a moral life, and faithfulness in your dealings with mankind, answer the same purpose as the love which he requires you to render to himself? Can the homage of the bended knee, and the song of praise on the lips, answer the purpose of the offering of the heart before One who looks through all the chambers of the soul? Can wealth hoarded and prized, or scattered among the needy; can beauty or accomplishment; can a graceful exterior, a lively wit, a cultivated intellect, and propriety of manners, be of value to him without the heart, or answer the purpose which he contemplates by its change? Just as much as diamond rings, and strings of pearls, answer the place of fidelity and affection to an outraged and injured wife-and no more. Go and plead your moral character before God, as a reason why you should be saved. What would be its reception ? 'All this would be well,' might be the response, but the heart was required; the regenerated affections of the soul were demanded. Where are the affections of that heart?' Go plead your fidelity to your family; your kindness as a husband, and father, and neighbour; your honesty to men. 'All this is well. But where is the heart for me?' the Saviour might reply; where is the evidence of love to your God?' Go plead accomplishment, wit, learning, talent, beauty-are these what are required to fit men for heaven? Are these proposed to be substituted in the place of what is required? Be not deceived. Nor rank, nor wealth, nor talent, nor learning, nor gracefulness of manners, nor eminence in your profession, nor oratory, nor the crown of victory won on the battle-field, nor any other thing, can be a substitute for a renovated heart. They will not answer the same purpose while men live here; they will not extend their influence to a future world when they die. A splendid steamer leaves the wharf to cross the ocean. Youth, and beauty, and rank, crowd on board; age, and middle age, are there; the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the bond, the free, the peasant, the prince, are there. She moves majestically on. Suddenly she strikes an iceberg, and in a moment goes down. There is a tremendous plunge; a heaving of the waves; a boiling, rolling sea for a few moments where she sank. But it is soon over. The sea is again smooth. The deep, dark, blue ocean rolls on; and the ruffled deep becomes calm

"A glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself."

But those distinctions of age, and beauty, and rank—where are they? Have they attended those who sank, as they went up to the bar of God? Vanished-all vanished-before the sea was made calm where they sank; and alike the prince and the peasant, the master and his slave, make their bed amidst the corals of the ocean. There was but one distinction that lived on. If there was piety in one heart and wickedness in another, they lived on. The distinction that survived the catastrophe, and the only one, was that which was made when the penitent heart yielded itself to God, and was born again.

IV. I suggest one other thought, which will require no time to prove or illustrate it: it is, that there will be of necessity no such change in death as to fit the soul for heaven. And if this is so; if man by nature is unfit for heaven; if no change which he ordinarily undergoes fits him for it; if he can substitute nothing in the place of a renovated heart to fit him for heaven; and if death will make no such change as will adapt him to the employments of the skies,—then it follows that there is a necessity for man to be born again. And that it is so, assuredly I need not now attempt to prove. What is the change at death? The rose of health fades from the cheek; the brow is "chill, and changeless;" the eye is closed, and in that lifeless form there is a mild angelic air,"

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"Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,"

At death, we are borne

but there is no religion in that change. away indeed from the world where we were tempted; the objects that with idolatrous affection we loved; the allurements of wicked companionship; the assembly-room, where, in festive mirth, we forgot God and provoked his wrath;—but there is no religion in that. All that is solemn, tender, affecting on the dying bed may be gone through, and still there be not a particle of religious emotion there. And is there some magic power→→→ some potent charm in the grave-in the long slumberings there -in the solemn stillness-in the withdrawment from scenes of gaiety and temptation—to change the heart, to wean the soul from the world-to prepare even the body there for the resurrection of the just? Or is there something in the solemn, lonely journey of the departed spirit up to God-some new efficacy of the blood of the atonement to be applied to the soul on its upward way to fit it for the skies? Surely none of these things can be pretended :—and if none of these things are so, then there is a necessity that the sinner should be born again before he dies.

The argument which I proposed to submit to you is now before you. It is not an argument addressed to you as if there were any doubt about the meaning of what the Saviour says in the text, or as if his authority were not a sufficient ground for the truth of a doctrine; or as if the truth of what he says could be confirmed by any reasonings of mine ;-but an argument designed simply to show that what he says commends itself to every man's conscience and sober judgment.

The only thought which I would seek to hold before your minds in the application of this subject is, the indispensable necessity of this change for every one of you if you would be saved. Whether it is to be produced by a Divine or human agency; whether you can effect it yourselves or not; whether you can by your own efforts contribute to it, or whether those efforts would be fruitless, are not points which we shall now discuss; nor is their solution necessary in order that the force of the considerations suggested should be properly felt. The single point which is before us now is, that this change is indispensable if you would enter into heaven. Every one; every son and daughter of Adam; every prince and every peasant; every master and every slave; every profligate and every moral man; every one who outrages all the laws of decency and urbanity, and every one who is the charm and glory of the social circle, must experience this change, or he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. He must experience it, unless the Saviour was wrong in his estimate of the human character, and has uttered what is not based on truth. He must experience it, unless he can show that his heart is such by nature that he is fitted for the enjoyments and employments of heaven; or unless some of the transitions through which he passes in life will answer the purpose; or unless he can substitute something else for it at the bar of God; or unless there will be some mysterious process in the grave, or beyond it, by which the body and the spirit shall be fitted for the skies. The language of the Saviour to all is, "Ye must be born again." Reason gives her sanction to that declaration; conscience echoes it in your ears; and pious kindred and friends seek to bear it to the heart. Every man feels and knows it to be true, when he will let conscience speak out; when he has any just view of his own heart; or when from a bed of death he looks out on eternity. The solemn declaration of God our Saviour on this subject, thus seconded by reason and conscience, is laid across the path of every aged man, of every one in middle life, of every youth, and of every child. Of the crowd that you meet in the thronged pathways of a great city,

it is true that no one reaches heaven unless he is born again ; and of the solitary stroller in a summer's eve on the verge of a purling stream, or the lonely traveller on the mighty prairie, it is no less true that unless he be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. It is equally true of each and every one of you that without this change you will never enter heaven. The heart must be changed. The impenitent soul must become contrite; the proud man must be humbled; the unbelieving must put his trust in the Son of God. And if the course of argument now pursued is sound, the subject is one that demands your immediate attention. Few days remain in which this change can occur, and then all will be fixed for ever. Soon the time will come in which it will be said of each and all, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still." God grant that before that time-not far distantshall have arrived, each heart may be so changed that it may convey gladness to the bosom to hear it said that all hereafter is to be fixed and unchanging. The line once crossed which divides time from eternity, all is over for ever; for in the world of despair no one is ever born again.

SERMON XIX.

THE NATURE OF REGENERATION.

2 COR. v. 17.-" If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

THE point which I propose, from these words, to illustrate is, the nature of regeneration, or of the new birth. The apostle evidently refers to this in the text. He is adverting to the great change which had occurred in his own mind on a particular subject, and then advances the general sentiment, that when one becomes a Christian all his views are changed, or become "new." "We have," says he, "known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." That is, 'I formerly had carnal and worldly views of the Messiah. In common with my countrymen, I looked for a temporal prince and deliverer. But I entertain these views no longer, and regard him no more as such. My views of him are essentially changed, and I now regard him as a spiritual Saviour, dying to make an atonement for sin.' A change resembling this, he says, occurs in the case of all who are converted. If any man is in Christ, or becomes a true Christian, his views are in a similar manner changed;-changed to such an extent that it may be said he is a new creature, for the change of view does not pertain merely to his apprehensions about the Saviour, but extends to everything. In reference to all matters, "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

This statement expresses, with perfect accuracy, the change which occurs in regeneration. It is a change of view not merely with reference to one particular point, but to the whole subject of religion; a change so great that it may be properly called a new creation, or of such a nature that all things may be said in the view of the mind to be new.

It is my object now to illustrate the nature of this change; and, in order to this, it is important that we have clear views on two points. The first is, that we separate from the work certain things which are not essential to it, or in reference to