LECTURE VII.

SUMMARY OF THE CASE; AND CONCLUDING PRACTICAL

DE

EXHORTATION.

EAR young friends, in my preceding Lectures I have endeavoured fairly and fully to set before you the grand particulars of the case on which you are now called solemnly to declare your decision. You have seen, on the one hand, the blessings offered conditionally, as from God Himself, to each and every one of the children of Adam, on entrance by Christian baptism into profession of the religion of Jesus: and, moreover, the very various and irrefragable evidence of the divine origin of that religion; and proof, consequently, that the offer may be fully depended on as really and truly from God. On the other hand, you have also had set before you the conditions on which alone the blessings are offered;-conditions, namely, of believing, renouncing, fulfilling, such as were explained, somewhat in detail, in my last Lecture; and which were accepted for you, provisionally, by your respective sponsors, on occasion of your entrance, each one, when infants, by baptism into the Christian Church.

And now, then, what will be your decision? After all that you have heard on the subject, I have certainly little fear of any one of you shrinking from the ratification of your baptismal engagements; or indeed of your regarding the act of ratifying them in the ordinance of Confirmation as a mere formality. Rather my fear is lest, with some of you at least, there should

be no adequate sense of the critical nature of the occasion; the grandeur of the profession you are about to make; the magnitude of the interests involved in it, and formidableness, at the same time, of the difficulties and perils which endanger them: and that thus, consequently, there may be no nerving yourselves to that strong resolution, and fixed whole-heartedness, without which success in the Christian profession is not to be hoped for. Do we not read in the "Pilgrim's Progress,' -a book fraught with lessons of large and ripe Christian experience, of one Pliable, who, under the easy influence of Christian persuasion, and with nothing but the bright side of Christianity in view, started hopefully and buoyantly on the heavenly road; but, on his first encounter with its difficulties at the Slough of Despond, gave up the enterprise, and made the best of his way back to the City of Destruction? Again, in a book of yet higher authority than the "Pilgrim's Progress," are we not warned by the story of one who began to build a tower, and was not able to finish? It needs that you well count the cost. "Whosoever will follow me," said Jesus Christ, "must deny himself." Nor is there this kind of difficulty alone. "We wrestle not only against flesh and blood,' said the great apostle to the Gentiles; "but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the darkness of this world; against spiritual wickedness in high places."

In my musings of late on this subject it has seemed to me as if a kind of mighty mystery attached to each one of you; little as the general world around you may be conscious of it; and little hitherto, probably, not a few among your own selves :-a mystery soon to be unfolded in the coming future. The recollection came over me, while thus thinking, of the story in one of Sir W. Scott's great romances, which I remember reading in my younger days with intense interest, (let me be excused for such a reference,) as offering no inapt,

however inadequate, an illustration of the case. The plot of the romance, as I recollect it, is somewhat as follows: Its hero is the heir to an ancient baronial inheritance; who, having been kidnapped in early childhood, through the scheming of some subtle enemy, has been almost from infancy an exile from his home and native land, and altogether ignorant of his high birth and heirship. At length, when grown up to man's estate, there draws on, as foretold indeed at his birth by astrologic skill, the crisis of his destiny. Returning, in the course of events, to his native land, he is led, though all unconscious of the issues at stake, and of his own deep personal interest in them, to direct his steps towards the site of his paternal home. Meanwhile perilous adventures, and hair-breadth escapes, await him. Mixed up with these adventures are certain strange persons, endued with mysterious power and intelligence,-some intensely hostile, others as devotedly friendly, that hover round his path, with their plots and counterplots, to hinder or to help: themselves acquainted with the secret; and interested deeply for, or against, him. After a while, in spite of the hostile beleaguerments, he reaches the near neighbourhood of his old home at the critical hour of his destiny. As he gazes on the long-forgotten scene, infantine reminiscences of it steal dreamily across his imagination. Tokens, unconsciously carried about by him, are now discovered, which prove his right of heirship. The patrimonial castle and domain, though alienated it seems by his father's folly, is found to have been by a powerful friend redeemed. And the end is that, having been recognised as the long-lost heir, he is through this friend's intervention restored to the ancestral inheritance.

Dear young friends, you will already have anticipated the application. To you, to each one of you,-each one, let me say, individually,-there attaches the mighty secret, however unthought of by others, and however

long forgotten too very possibly by thyself in this earthly land of exile, of a title to the heavenly inheritance. The secret is now, at any rate, revealed to thee. Perhaps, as thou hast lately heard the heavenly heritage spoken of by the Christian minister, reminiscences of holy thoughts about it in the days of early childhood may have stolen dreamily, yet sweetly, over thy mind; and, together with them, there may have been the waking up too of fresh and earnest longings after it. If so, that fact seems a token surely scarce mistakeable of thy presumptive title to the inheritance; and token too that the critical hour for thy assuring it to thyself is even now come. Up then; and both at the coming confirmation assert thy claim; and afterwards still continue to press it. Not alone, or unwatched, remember, wilt thou be in the further unfolding of the mighty destiny concerning thee. Hosts there are, we know from Holy Scripture, of spiritual beings hovering round thy path:-some of them malignant enemies, sworn to annihilate thy high hopes, if by any art of seduction or temptation they can effect it; others, angelic spirits, sent to minister to them that are heirs of salvation. Above all there is the eye of the Almighty One, thy Saviour God, upon thee::-even of Him who, at the price of his own blood, has redeemed for us the once forfeited heavenly inheritance. And, be the enemies, the dangers, and the difficulties in thy path towards it what they may, his grace will be sufficient to make thee more than conqueror over them all. Trusting in this, then, hesitate not publicly on the morrow to declare thyself his disciple; and, having thus joined thyself to Him in the bonds of the covenant, thenceforward, relying on the same grace and help, to walk steadfastly

in it.

If our Church's confirmation ordinance be thus gone through by you, we have, I think, the warrant of Holy Scripture to show that a blessing may be expected to attend your then solemn ratifying of the baptismal cove

nant. Look to the two memorable examples of Israel's renewing its national covenant with God in the far distant times of Joshua and of King Josiah. Of the former we read thus, as recorded in the last chapter of the Book of Joshua. On the aged patriarch's gathering together of all the elders of Israel to Shechem before his death, and solemnly putting to them the question, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," whether the Lord Jehovah, the covenanted God of their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the gods of the heathen nations around them, we read that the answer of the people was, "God forbid that we should serve other gods; Jehovah our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey." Whereupon Joshua "wrote down the words in a copy of the book of the law of God; and set up a great stone," as a standing witness of the fact, "under an oak by the sanctuary of the Lord." And what the next thing recorded of Israel; at least, the next after mention of Joshua's immediately following death? It is this;-that Israel "served the Lord faithfully all the days of the elders (those self-same elders) that overlived Joshua."-Again, respecting the renewal of the covenant under King Josiah, we thus read in the the Second Book of Chronicles (chap. xxxiv.): "The king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah; and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant. And the king, standing in his place, made a covenant before the Lord, to keep his commandments and his testimonies with all his heart, and with all his soul. And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem to stand to the covenant." Immediately after which transaction there follows this notice; "And all the days of Josiah Israel departed not from following the Lord God of their fathers." So did spiritual blessing from God upon the people, follow their solemn renewal of the covenant with God in this case, just as in that of the time of Joshua.-Specially pleasing to God is such a covenant, when made with Him