stract virtue which you may content yourselves with admiring, but as a practical and necessary Christian grace, which he who lacks may easily satisfy himself of. It is in this view that it is an easy test of our Christian advances. It is impossible to understand the nature of charity, and defend the divisions and differences which unhappily retard the progress of Christ's spiritual kingdom. Our religion is one and indivisible: there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Charity, the very spirit of this religion, is equally indivisible; it embraces every virtue, and lives in the cultivation of every grace it is the spirit we must endeavour to attain, and by which only we can become the sons of God. Let us learn, in the cultivation of this general grace, to lay aside those invidious distinctions by which we have rendered the high doctrines of our religion subservient to our separations, and assure ourselves that any doctrines by which we do not resolve our religion into one consistent system of holiness and charity is at

enmity both with the letter and the spirit of the Gospel. Let us not hear of distinctions, but apply our religion to guide our own steps aright: render it not a general, but a personal question, affecting not our neighbours, but our own salvation, and however straight may be the gate, or narrow may be the way which leads us safely through the world to the mansions of eternal bliss, we shall find a sure and unerring guide in Christian charity. When beset by party differences, or by disputes about doctrines, let us place ourselves under the guidance of charity, and we shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. Let us answer the question of good works, by holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord; that of faith, by charity, which believeth all things, which hopeth all things; and we shall not vainly entangle ourselves in the wily and unproductive mazes of disorder and uncharitableness, of religious disputation. In putting on charity in its full and scriptural sense, we shall put on the whole armour of God;

we shall hallow and strengthen our exertions to work out our salvation; we shall grow daily more and more in grace, till in the maturity of every Christian virtue, our faith triumphant, our hopes accomplished, we shall reap the blessed fruits of the greatest of Christian virtues.

HAVING explained to you the mistaken views of this great Christian virtue which the world embraces, and endeavoured from the description of the apostle to place its true character before you, it remains for me to show you the meaning of the passage I have now chosen for my text. In a former discourse I endeavoured to explain to you the difference between sowing to the flesh and sowing to the spirit; that the former reaped in the grave an harvest of corruption, while the harvest of the latter, in a future state of immortality, was life everlasting. I endeavoured to show you in that discourse, that it was the ad

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vancement of the spirit we were to tend; that as the enjoyments of a future state would be spiritual, our preparation must be spiritual also. Now the practical consequences to which in these several discourses I would lead you, are conveyed to us in the words of my text, "Charity never faileth." We have considered it as a spiritual virtue, embracing and equally affecting all mankind, as the greatest, because comprehending all other Christian virtues; we are now to consider it as that improvement and exercise of the spiritual graces, which shall prepare us for the enjoyments of a future world: it is in this sense that it is said never to fail. It will commence on earth, to be continued in heaven it is as it were the link that unites them; as the soul breathed into man's nostrils as the breath of life, is that spark of the divine nature which alone ensures its immortality, so is charity that grace of heavenly truth, by which the soul shall be adorned and made ready for participation in the spiritual joys of heaven.