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and dying aspect of the world, turning in grief, with a melting and despairing eye, it reads, and with rapture, too, it reads, there is balm in Gilead, and a Physician there.

This redemption comes not alone to teach, to guide by example; not to attest truth simply, but to give life and immortality -a reprieve from death-suspension of justice, that man may live. It goes forth like its author, to bless and save. The benevolence it inspires seeks the application of its remedy. And as the opposing influences of sin are so appaling, the ocean of woe so deep and shoreless as almost to forbid effort, this system brings an auxiliary, an encouragement, nowhere known but here-the promise of Almighty power to execute the purposes of grace, to crown every effort of the saints with an abundant blessing.

Under this system of divine purposes, gracious sovereignty and electing love, we know that religion will revive and spread, multitudes be saved; and God has drawn no limits to our labors and our hopes. Under this system, we enter the wilderness, dark as night, and the pillar of fire is there. Plunge into the sea, and its waves retire. Through Christ we can do all things.

Awakened by the sin and suffering, the condemnation of thousands, their salvation presented by Christ, every motive and auxiliary to secure it, what can more arouse the believer in this truth to labor and die to extend its knowledge to every sinner on the face of the globe? Here are stimulants to the most powerful and untiring activity. I see not how the believer's moral energy can sleep under the Gospel, as we receive it. How can he rest while a world is heaving with its throes of anguish, and hell fast filling with its monuments of death?

Under this system there is no place, no permission, to stop or relax exertion for the instruction, improvement, and salvation of an entire world. Yea, there can be no desire to stop while one distant soul is ignorant of Christ. There is no room for restless caviling, nor stupid unconcern. It is enough to command an angel's mind in the wisdom of its arrangement; enough to arouse the dead in the tremendous nature of its issues.

Then let us "contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints."

THIRDLY, In conclusion, I would allude briefly to the manner in which we should met the injunction of the text.

This implies no violence, no crusades, no denunciation, no weapons of a carnal warfare. It demands no heated passion; no exclusive partisanship; no violence of the social courtesies and sympathies of life; no invasion of the privileges of private opinion and free discussion; nothing of that distance, reserve and haughty carriage that so often mark the footsteps of ecclesiastical domination, and pride of assumed prerogatives and abused power. Nothing of this should illustrate the deep attachment

of the Christian to the faith of his choice, or his defence of its invaded and invaluable principles.

1. We should" contend for the faith" by cherishing for it an open and decided attachment. Give it its claims upon your heart and your high regard in all your preaching. Let it be known that you love it as the security of your hopes, the ground of your usefulness, the honor of your Saviour. Bind it upon your hearts as the legacy of his love, the charter of his kingdom, and the pledge of your allegiance.

2. Let this affectionate interest be an enlightened attachment. The mind of every Christian should be imbued with these lessons of truth. He should ever be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in him, and light should radiate from him as from a star.

3. This faith should be early and prayerfully inculcated in family discipline. It should be incorporated with the discipline of every household, form the thoughts and aspirations of the opening mind, and become the exhaustless storehouse for earliest initia tion and perpetual research. These truths excluded from the family, from the Sabbath School, and from the religious reading for the young, and ignorance, licentiousness, and death, will derange and debase their riper years and close their eternal destiny. 4. We should secure and sustain those sacred institutions which this faith enjoins, and ever be ready to make sacrifices for its ad vancement and the security of its purposes. Its preaching, its or dinances, its recurring services, are not only its symbols, but its securities. And the grand end of this faith secured, is the proof of its transcendent excellence. One revival of religion, scriptural and pure, becomes the divine sanction of the faith that attends it, which neither scepticism nor sin can resist, while its subjects, loving the doctrines and duties inculcated at this eventful crisis of the soul's history, become the living epistles of their purity and value, the monuments we rear to the glory of God, the defence and honor of "the faith delivered to the saints."

5. We should contend for this faith by affectionate reliance upon God, and fervent wrestling for the spirit that gave it; for that which makes it the fire and the hammer that breaketh the rock-the arrow of the Almighty-the wisdom and the power of God unto salvation.

Finally, We should contend for the faith by a practical illustration of its charity—the diffusing spirit and untiring energy of its benevolence.

The spirit, the life of our faith is charity. Practical piety is its brightest sanction; its holy and efficient commendation, "See how these Christians love one another," carried conviction to the heart. And as they love the world, and are alive to its wants, there rises proof of their piety and the power of their faith.

This faith is not to live and spread by the force of controversy, yet thousands are won to truth and to God by the labors of love. And in this age of independent thought, there is no hope from

the array of ecclesiastical prerogatives nor from church excisions. There is no saving mercy in spiritual domination, nor in official investitures. These multiply no converts to Christ, while crowds of redeemed from error and death rise from the excellent knowledge, the tenderness of forbearance and the persuasions of love. The cry of heresy; the charge of undefined error; the lifted arm; the terror of execution! Is this the way to promote the Christian faith? Is this the charity it breathes? In this age of thought, reflection, of argument and advance, errors of philosophy, of speculation, of creeds even, are not corrected by the asperities of controversy, nor by the charges and dogmas issuing from the schools or the chairs of tutorage. School against school, of fice against office, church against church, is not the heavenlydirected way to advance the truth and save the world..

But let the ministry of the church be enlisted in the exalted enterprise of charity; pressing onward to convert the world by the truth uncorrupted, radiant in the light of celestial love; and there is no time. no desire to waste their energies in useless contest. That great cause, the world's salvation, so absorbing; its issues so eventful and glorious, all inferior objects are lost in its commanding claims-forever lost in the magnificence of its triumphs.

My brethren, we have here in "the faith" an ample remedy for every evil resting on mankind. In the power of its truth and charity God confides his cause, the infinite purchase of his grace. And it appeals with special interest to us. We profess to be among those whose stern adherence to truth rises superior to all considerations of office and church prescription, and order, and forms. We derive from the truth of God, his power divine, not from official endowments and personal investments. We receive from no human succession the hope and grace of God, but direct from his truth and that eternal Spirit that giveth life. As much as we prize our ecclesiastical order and our forms of scriptural simplicity, we ascribe to them no exclusive efficacy, but ever hold them subservient to the higher ends of truth. Everything else we sacrifice to this; without which, everything of order, of forms, of ordinances, of office, of succession, and endowments, is worthless and vain, but with which, religion will live and triumph, and bring to ultimate and heavenly order the entire church of renovated men.

It is not strange, then, that we should have stable confidence, amid all the perils that surround us, just in proportion as we value, and harmonize in, and are determined at all hazards to maintain and advance the truth as it is in Jesus. Nor is it strange that we should look with jealousy and dread upon every invasion of the essential elements of the faith, by whomsoever made, or under whatsoever pretensions. There is no wisdom nor charity in obscuring or compromising one essential truth for any end that heaven or earth can name. It should not be overlooked

that both mistaken charity and sectarian policy may unite their influence to obscure the truth, and perhaps there has been no time more favorable than the present for this sad result. Mind is no longer isolated and solitary in its investigations; no one wanders in error alone. Men now act in masses, and move forward under the instruction and guidance of schools. One mind gives form and energy to thousands; and when wrongly directed the peril is immense, as by the frost of a single night the rich harvest of a whole year and entire country are cut down. Minds thus moving as in constellations, if in conflict, it is like the concussion of systems. Error thus diffused, and yet consolidated and fortified, becomes doubly formidable, and demands as formidable, concentrated, and harmonious action to meet and control it. And where can we unite on ground so sacred and safe as on the ground of truth? And for what other ends on earth can we here divide? I can not but fear, that, from the imperfections of men, the history of seminaries and universities, and even from laudable desire for Christian union in benevolent efforts, if not from the actual state of the pulpit and the press at this hour, rigid truth, in its high evangelical character, may suffer wrong and be eclipsed. Resting upon this faith, and upon nothing else, the charter of our church and the basis of our hopes, if this is corrupted or obscured, we, as a distinctive body, are gone; and turning aside for the advancement of other interests than this, we are lost as to the high destiny of our mission. Yea, seeking to cure the evils of the world without this, or in advance of this, we are sure of defeat and of infinite loss.

We are indeed nearing a fearful crisis; the world is in serious conflict, in restless, violent, and convulsive action. All is impatience, uncertainty, and fear. The wisest and the best are in doubt, and hesitate; and I rejoice that it is so. I believe the time has come when God will confound the wisdom of the wise, check the presumption of arrogance, and spiritual boasting, and fanatical zeal, and give a new and brilliant sanction to truth and grace by Jesus Christ. The frameworks reared around the faith must be laid aside, human device be abandoned, and the pure gospel have its course, run and be glorified. Truth the weapon of our warfare, and grace the ground of our hopes, doubts in the policy of our plans will end. God shall open springs in the desert; more than the pillar of cloud and of fire shall guide our way, and more than Canaan spread her rich and radiant fields, our home, our rest, and full reward.

Let the spirit of the Gospel be diffused abroad, Christ crucified be preached, obeyed, and loved, evils appalling shall die away life from the dead and liberty in God shall reign; as by enchantment, the conflicting elements of the world shall rest; the songs of the jubilee break upon every ear; the charity of truth, righteousness, and Christ, adorn and bless the entire race of fallen man.

BY THE REV. G. A. LINTNER, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE EVAN. LUTHERAN CHURCH AT SCHOHARIE, N. Y.

THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO ASSEMBLE FOR PRAYER. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.-MATTHEW Xviii. 20.

CHRIST is here speaking of prayer, and of meeting for this purpose. In the preceding verse he says, that if only two of his disciples shall agree to ask anything of his Heavenly Father, it shall be given them. He shows the power and efficacy of united prayer. In the text he expresses the same sentiment, only in much stronger terms; he tells us, that where two or three are assembled in his name, he will be present. The presence of Christ with his people is always to be regarded by them as a great blessing, but more especially in prayer; he is there present, not merely to comfort their hearts with the tokens of his love, as their precious Redeemer, but to hear and answer prayer.

Christ meets his people at the mercy seat with peculiar manifestations of his presence. He reveals himself as the mighty deliverer, who is able to save to the uttermost every one that cometh to God through him, as the great Intercessor and prevailing Advocate with the Father, who presents the prayers of his people at the throne of heavenly grace, and is able to procure for them every needed blessing.

The language of Christ in the text is very expressive. It teaches that it is the duty of Christians to meet for prayer, and holds out a precious promise as an encouragement to this duty. Christ gives us to understand in these words, that there is something peculiar in united prayer, something that can not be experienced and realized when we are alone. He does not say that he will not hear us when we call upon him alone in our closets, or at the family altar; but he teaches us that we ought to meet to mingle our prayers at the throne of grace, and that when we thus meet, our prayers will be more effectual than when we call upon his name separately and alone. This is clearly the doctrine of the text, and this doctrine I shall endeavor to illustrate and to establish by several considerations to which I propose to call your further attention.

1. God is ever ready to hear the prayers of his people, when they approach him with the right spirit. It matters not in what place or under what circumstances we draw near to God-whether in public or in private, in our closet or in the congregation-if we lift up our hearts to God, he will hear our prayer. But still God is desirous that his peo

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