under the most disadvantageous circumstances, that which is sufficient for salvation. Sincerity, then, is the upright dealing of the heart with this truth. But who can venture to say in an off-hand manner that he has so dealt with it? If men's solicitude about their souls and their eternal interests bore any proportion to what they commonly feel for this world's goods, the point would be easier to decide. The number of those who are in earnest about eternal things is small as compared to those who are wholly wanting in this disposition. Hence it is that they not only do not act in respect to the interests of their souls as they would with respect to the interests of their bodies, but their mental acts are also tainted with insincerity. This would not be possible were they in earnest; but it is very possible, and a thing of commonest occurrence, where men are not. We well know the fatal power man has of allowing his judgment to be blinded, and his reason overpowered, when a strong desire has possession of him. Now, the strong desire which possesses the minds of multitudes of persons is, not the desire to save their souls, but a desire to quiet their consciences, to feel comfortable and satisfied about their spiritual state and their eternal prospects. They confound these two things together; but it is plain that the two objects are widely different. The wish to save your soul, and the wish to think it safe, are two very different things. And yet I am persuaded that there is a very common confusion of mind on this point among English Protestants. We observe among them a certain religiousness, so to say, of feeling, which deludes the subject of it into thinking himself a sincerely religious person. We see a certain anxiety or solicitude about religious concerns, a wish to be furnished with a set of satisfactory opinions, miscalled a creed, and an attachment to some outward form of pious observances. But all this is quite compatible with the absence of real earnestness. The very inconsistency of the motley collection of opinions adopted --an inconsistency which would excite the derision of these same persons in any plain every-day matter-of-fact-their incapability, or rather their unwillingness, to follow up the

simplest principle, is a proof of the hollowness of the whole system, and the real insincerity of their heart towards God and their own souls. Can they think that such a religion will stand the scrutiny of the Searcher of hearts?

Such, at least, was not the religion of Jonathan Browne. What he sought was, not comfort and satisfaction, but the will of God and his soul's salvation. To please his Maker and his Redeemer, from the moment he had learnt any thing of Him, and to save his soul, these motives, or rather this one motive, for they blend into one where they are genuine, alone occupied and influenced him. God and his soul-nothing less, nothing intermediate-that with him. was all; and that must be all with every one who would be sincere as God accounts sincerity. Those who are happily within the visible fold of Christ's Church must be sincere after this fashion if they wish to be saved; and those who are unhappily without it, not through their own fault, but because they have inherited their sad position, must be nothing less; but as true as God is a God of truth and of mercy, if they are thus sincere and honest, they will be led on from truth to truth, and from graces to grace, till they reach the sacred portal of God's holy Church; or they will be saved as secretly belonging to her fold, and included in the invisible embrace of her maternal love.

That which we love and which we choose shall be our portion. God, in giving us free will, gave us this awful power of choice. Good and evil are before us. By God's grace, which He gives sufficiently to every man, we may choose the good, and assuredly it shall not be taken from

us.

If a man chooses God, his supreme good, and places his desire and happiness in knowing and doing His will, that God who made him for Himself alone shall be his eternal portion, however scanty, through the inscrutable providence of the All-wise, may have been his knowledge of Him. But if he choose something else short of this, be it his own religious comfort and satisfaction, or an abstract and high standard of duty, or a lofty code of honour, or the self-satisfaction of what is called doing good, or any other plausible aim which may wear the semblance of vir

tue or of piety, verily he shall have his reward; but that reward is not that for which his Maker created him, nor that which Christ died to purchase for him.

When will Protestants learn this great truth-that no man is necessary to God Almighty; neither his high gifts, nor his pompous services, nor his natural virtues? God has need of no man. He might have created millions of worlds more beautiful than any He has made, and peopled them with more exalted beings than He has been pleased to create; and if He had done so, He would have needed them and their perfections and their services no more than He needs those of poor sinful man. But by a mystery of ineffable love He has, so to say, made one thing needful to Him, though the need is ours and not His; He has willed to need our hearts. He asks for them; yes, of every man, woman, and child whom He has made; and oh, wonder! He gives His own Heart in return :-Himself, indivisibly, entirely, in all the fulness of that eternal love which is Beatitude, the joy of God, into which He shall bid His faithful servants enter. Hence it is, that he who loves God sincerely and truly is His by the eternal covenant He has made in His Son; and ignorance, inculpable ignorance, shall never exclude a man from the embrace of his God. The blind and the lame and the halt shall arise and take possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.

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