CHRISTIAN STABILITY.

MY FELLOW CHRISTIANS,

I devoutly beseech God to aid me in my fearfulness to speak to the fulness of my text this morning.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,

or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,

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For thy sake we are killed all the day long we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin

cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,* nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

It is the portion of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the 8th chapter, the five last verses.

I might be answered, that my text is not literally applicable unto us. We can rejoice that much of the cause of its enumeration is passed away; at least, that a more even path is trodden by us in our profession of Christianity. Do we give God the praise, by making our conduct consonant to the smoothed or pleasurable road, in comparison, which we have to go, by performing faithfully the part which devolves

on us? Praised be our heavenly Father, that, with Christianity, have progressed peace and righteousness, whose they are, which were heralded in its proclamation, of "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

The result proves the truth of the triumphant, as it were jubilant, chorussed by angels, descending from heaven, to gladden the earth with wisdom and purity..

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Our fathers had much to bear, which shall not return any more unto those who profess and promulgate Christianity. Truly did the Apostle write, that he and they who professed Christ with him, the first generation of Christians, were, as it might be called, killed all the day long: that, for their faith, they were uncertain of life from their fellow men, as sheep for the slaughter. And yet, Nay,

that in all these things they were more than conquerors, through him that loved them-that they could not be subdued-the spirit of holiness that breathed through them could not be quenched-that it had gone forth a leaven among men, until it should leaven the race. That he was persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, should be able to separate them from the love of God, which they had in Christ Jesus their Lord. In other words, in fulfilment of the prophecy or counsel of Gamaliel, when he stood up in the senate of the children of Israel, and advised them to refrain from these men, for if this work were of God, they could not overthrow it; lest haply they might be found fighting against God.

From the apostles has descended the stream, widening in its course, and meeting unresistingly the turbulent elements of strife that opposed themselves to its purity, till they have sunken, and clarified in its inundation, and swelled the majesty of its ocean.

It was natural, that the existing institutions of the world should oppose the propagation of the Gospel. Few men had discovered the quickening principle, to behold, in their fellow men, their brethren. It was in contravention of their existing prejudices, misconceptions, and interests. Even the Jewish democracy was established in its different and distinct tribes; and in many respects, they were as separate to each other, as the whole of them were to every other people. It had its tribe peculiar to the priesthood; and its singers; and those who administered in the temple; and its sceptre was not to depart from the tribe of Judah: indeed, each and every one had its peculiar characteristic and office. Its habitation was provincial; and therefore it was, that they enquired, Whether any good thing could come out of Nazareth. It was to the correction of these things, and to the establishing and extending of the broad and defensible principles of universal liberty, light, and reason, that the Saviour appeared in the earth; to widen the knowledge; to give light to all former revelations of God, in that He is the universal Father, in the brotherhood of the human race.

Strange as it may appear, that these glad tidings of great joy to all people were hailed not with an enthusiastic delight, it is recorded only (and the signalization is sufficient from which to infer, that it was

not so with any others), that the common people heard him gladly. Yet, unstable through their ignorance and their low condition, they lent themselves, eventually, to the machinations of their rulers, to effect the ruin and death of him whom they had felt to be seeking their own present, and future, improved condition and happiness. What a lesson in the history of mankind is this: and what an admonition to the excellent of our race, to relax not in any effort to raise the moral and religious-in these combinedthe educated standard of men! The subsequent conduct of most rulers of the earth has testified, that Christianity is not compatible with them. The kingdoms of the earth have been one undivided struggle, even in their friendships, for the strangulation of the Gospel.. Yet, still have the common people, { when it has been occasionally preached unto them faithfully, continued to hear it gladly; and yet have often been enlisted in the unholy warfare, and made the duped instruments to perpetuate their own degradation and misery. I shall endeavour to shew this; and that yet, nevertheless, that Christianity has been progressing in the world; and that, in the strong language of the Apostle, despite of all the contending evils which he has enumerated, none, not they all, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We are all acquainted, in some measure, from the Gospel histories, with the sufferings of the first Christians. But not to the full have we detailed unto us, what they did, and what they were; and to many, the tortuitous deaths, and yet which were merciful to

the inflictions in their lives, which they bore. You gather not the end, nor the course of the conduct, of many of them, from the various writings of the apostles; which were dictated, not to record these; but, in the midst of the endurance, they were for edification, and comfort, and the confirmation one of another, in the source of consolation, from which they all had so much cause largely to draw. It must be from contemporaneous writers, from those who did not believe in the Divine truth of the Gospel, yet who, while they were opposing it with the inveteracy of the deadliest malignancy, were, unknowingly, doing it essential service; and establishing it beyond contradiction or gainsaying. But I cannot now enlarge on these things; and on which I have in various discourses remarked: it being my object at the present moment to speak more in reference to ourselves, assuming the admission of the truth of these, concerning which, it might be said, that, if they could not be substantiated, neither could the course of events, to which I shall make reference, have existed; as they could not but have been the links of a continuous chain from that period until now. I leave them to come to our own country; and in what I shall adduce of its earlier history, to make it subservient to our own time.

I think it is probable, that Paul first preached Christianity in Britain. However, the history of its introduction, as is all the data of events of that period, is uncertain. It is only evident, that here, as elsewhere, it was planted in the midst of the strongholds of corruption and of human degradation, as it were a little leaven, till the whole should be leavened.