have been found among the patrons of the drama or the ball-room, as companions they are now to be forsaken, and you are to seek and find your associates among the disciples of the Lord Jesus. You are to come and say to each Christian brother, "thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." Ruth i. 16. 17. You are to breathe out the prayer of the Psalmist. "Remember me O Lord with the favor which thou bearest unto thy people." Ps. cvi. 4. You are to regard the Christian brotherhood as your chosen companionship, and to have fellowship with the friends of your days of sin, only in the necessary intercourse of relationship, of business, or to do them good. If this subjects you to their hatred or their scorn, it is to be borne, and if you cannot bear it, it proves that you have no true love to the Redeemer and his cause. With the friends of Christ, if a Christian, you will dwell forever in a world where there is no revelry, no worldly pleasure; and if on earth you decidedly prefer the society of the worldly and the gay to that of the humble friends of Christ, it shows where the heart is still, and demonstrates that it is not with Christ. How is he to be prepared for the society of heaven who has no love for the fellowship of Christians on earth; who prefers a ball-room to a prayer meeting, and the conversation of the gay and the frivolous, or even the scientific and the literary, to conversation about the glory of Christianity and the enjoyment of heaven?

"He

(4.) You should come prepared to give up even your kindred, and forsake them for Christ. On this point the Saviour was probably more explicit than on almost any other requirement of his religion. "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke xiv. 26. that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Matth. x. 37. On one occasion he commanded a man to follow him. "Suffer me first, said he, "to go and bury my father." "Let the dead bury the dead," was the firm reply of the Redeemer, "but go

thou and preach the kingdom of God." Luke ix. 59. 60. He demanded the strong proof which would thus be shown that he preferred him to his own friends, and that he was willing to break away from them even in the most tender and interesting circumstances, and to go where he required him. And the same principle is demanded now. If a profession of religion requires you to differ in opinion from father, or mother, or kindred, it should be done. If it requires you to break away from their pleasures; to cease to accompany them to the places of sin, you are to be willing to make the sacrifice, and to separate yourself unto God. If it shall demand of you to forsake your country and home, and to go to the ends of the earth to make him known, you are to come with that feeling. No one should enter the Christian church who would not be willing, if it were clearly shown to him to be his duty, to cross oceans to proclaim the Saviour's name, and to abandon forever all the comforts of his fireside and his home. This Christ demanded of the Apostles; and this he demands in every professor of religion. For if this feeling does not exist, how can there be a supreme regard to the will of Christ?

(5.) Allied to this, you should be willing to abandon any calling, however honorable and lucrative it may be, for any other calling where you can do more good.When Saul of Tarsus was converted, he was required to give up his plans of life and become a minister of the cross. And he did it without a murmur. So it must be in all other cases. No man comes into the church with a proper spirit who is not prepared to abandon any calling if Christ requires it, and if he can do more good in a new profession. It is not enough to say that his present calling is not unlawful, and that he may be useful in that. All that may be. But the grand question is, whether in that he can do more to honor Christ and save the world than in another. Remember one fact. God often converts young lawyers, and merchants, and farmers, and physicians, and mechanics, for the very purpose of making them ministers of the gospel-as he did Saul of Tarsus; and he expects them to fulfil his design as Saul did, by becoming heralds of salva

tion to a dying world. If he is not prepared to do just what in all honesty he believes Jesus Christ requires of him, he is not prepared to make a profession of religion.

(6.) One remark more under this head. If you are not willing to abandon any calling however lucrative it may be that is contrary to the Bible and to good morals, you should not dare to enter the church. If a man is converted as Paul was, pursuing an evil manner of life, though on the high road to honor and perhaps to wealth, and is not willing to abandon his course, he is not prepared to make a profession of religion. What sort of a professor of religion would Paul have been, if he had not been willing to give up the business of persecution? If a man is converted who is a slaveholder, as John Newton was, he should be prepared to give up the business, or he should not be allowed to make a profession of religion. Thus far all is clear. How is it now, under the operation of this principle, with the man who is engaged in the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits? In ancient Ephesus there were men who practised curious arts, and were devoted to it as a business. Under the preaching of Paul they were converted; and one of the first promptings of their Christian zeal was to bring together those books, and burn them before all men to the amount in value of "fifty thousand pieces of silver”— making the expression of their abhorrence at their former life as public as their life and business had been. There was manifested the great principle for which I contend -that no man should connect himself with a church, who is not prepared, at any sacrifice, as they were, to abandon any business, however lucrative, which is evil, and only evil, and that continually. How can a man be a Christian who is not prepared to make such a sacrifice? And why should he seek a connexion with a church to pursue his course of life under the sanction of the Christian name? No. The church needs not such members; and the Saviour never designed that any should profess his name who were not prepared forever to forsake all forms of evil however lucrative, and however honorable in the esteem of the world. No man can be a Christian who

pursues a calling which cannot be pursued from a sincere desire to glorify God; and no man should enter the church who is not prepared to sacrifice his profession, and his calling if it be a scandal and a disgrace to the Christian name.

SERMON XII.

THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH A PROFESSION OF RELIGION SHOULD BE MADE. NO. 2.

2 Cor. vi. 17, 18. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

In the previous discourse I stated some of the principles on which a profession of religion should be made. I propose now to resume the subject, and to state some other principles which should direct us in the performance of this duty.

IV. The fourth principle is, that we should come into the church with a fixed and settled purpose to do our whole duty as it may be made known to us by God. I mean by this, that we should not flinch from any duty, however arduous; we should not shrink back from it because it will demand personal sacrifice, or because it will bring upon us the scorn or the opposition of the world, or because it may be attended with pecuniary loss, or because it may expose us to a martyr's death.

It is scarcely necessary to attempt to prove that this is involved in the purpose to make a profession of religion. What is religion? It is doing the will of God. And he who professes religion, professes his solemn purpose to do the will of God, and not his own. When Saul of Tarsus was converted, one of the first questions which he asked was, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts ix. 6. The governing purpose of his soul was changed, and it became henceforth a characteristic of the man that he engaged unceasingly in doing the will of God. And how is it possible that a man can be a Christian who does not? Can he be a Christian who enters the church intending to do his duty or not, as he pleases; resolving to be guided by caprice, or fashion, or self-indulgence, or ambition, or pleasure, rather than by the solemn convictions