and heroes have exercised the virtues of temperance and moderation without the least advertence to the Divine will; and hence, as Augustine remarks, their virtues can only be regarded as splendid sins. "God was not in all their thoughts;" God was as much forgotten in their virtues as he was in their vices; they remained as dead in sin, because as dead to God, as ever. They sought to be admired and idolized in a world they were so soon to quit by creatures whose applause was of no value; and they were just as destitute of spiritual vitality as the most profligate of their fellow-mortals! Just as, amid the awful solemnities of the last day, we may imagine the impassioned admirer of nature or art beholding with regret so many fair objects and heart-ravishing scenes, in which he once delighted, all alike consigned to the final conflagration; even so the Christian may be supposed, on that occasion, touched with a momentary pang, to see many who here excited his admiration, many who perhaps obtained his esteem and awakened his tenderest sympathies, yet numbered at last with them that are lost! although he must then be satisfied, in a degree inconceivable at present, of the justice of their condemnation; inasmuch as (whatever they might have been besides) they were dead to God; they worshipped the creature more than the Creator; they were, in the essence of character, idolaters.

With respect to the origin of idolatry, it is probable that men began by raising images to the memory of departed heroes, and afterwards transferred their homage to the image itself; until they gradually descended to the worship of the meanest objects, even those which are the most obscene and unutterable. There is nothing so vile, filthy, disgusting, horrible, that has not, by some nation, been selected as an object of worship. Happily, we, my brethren, are situated so remote, both in time and place, from the principal of these abominations, that we are able to form only a very inadequate idea of the enormous folly to which they have proceeded.

2. But we turn to contemplate idolatry on another side; in its aspect towards man, its influence on society.

The apostle Paul informs us, that God hath shown to men what may be known concerning himself; that his invisible being, his eternal power and godhead, may be clearly seen and understood by the works of creation; so that those are without excuse who have changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image in the likeness of corruptible man, of birds, and beasts, and reptiles.* They are without excuse; their conduct admits of no apology: wherefore, as the apostle adds, God gave them up to a reprobate, a base and undiscerning, mind; and, as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them up to their own vile affections, and left them to violate even the laws of nature.

The origin of all the atrocities they committed was to be found in aversion to God; dislike of the spirituality and purity of his character; a desire, like Cain, to retire from the presence of their Maker; a wish to forget a Being whose character they knew to be utterly uncongenial

Rom. i. 19-25.

with their own. This disposition originally led men to substitute idols. for God. Those idols would, of course, be conceived of a character unlike that of God. Men would never form their imaginary deities after the model of him whom they disliked: accordingly, they receded to the utmost possible distance from all resemblance to the holy, omniscient, glorious God of Abraham and of Israel. Impure themselves, they were not disposed to adopt a God of purity; full of malignant passions, they would form no conception of a God of love -a Father pouring out his blessed fulness, and delighting in beneficence to his vast family. No, my brethren, their gods were of a different description; vindictive tyrants, divided, like themselves, in eternal factions and contentions; each pursuing his favourite objects and patronising his adopted party.

Homer, the first who appears to have composed a regular picture of idolatry, paints his Jupiter, or supreme deity, as deficient in every divine attribute; in omnipotence, in justice, and even in domestic peace. He paints Juno as the victim of eternal jealousy; and with good reason for her jealousy, when the earth was peopled, according to Homer, with the illegitimate progeny of Jupiter, to whom almost every hero traced his pedigree. Mars was the personification of rage and violence; Mercury the patron of artifice and theft. How far such a mythology influenced the character of its votaries it is perhaps impossible for us to know: nothing could be more curious than to look into the mind of a heathen. But it is certain that the mind must have been exceedingly corrupted by the influence of such a creed: and probably each individual idolater would be influenced by the deity whose character happened to be most accommodated to his own peculiar passions. An Achilles would emulate a Mars in ferocity and deeds of blood: a Ulysses would be a Mercury in craft and stratagem: while the ambitious mind of an Alexander or Julius Cæsar would aspire to act a Jupiter on earth. What a state of society must that be in which no vice, no crime could be perpetrated that was not sanctioned by the very objects of religious worship! What a religion that which exerted an antagonist force against conscience itself!—a religion which silenced or perverted the dictates of the moral sense, the thoughts that should either accuse or excuse us within! The temples of Venus, we are informed, were crowded by a thousand prostitutes, as servants and representatives of that licentious goddess; the very places of their worship were the scenes of their vices, and seemed as if they were designed to consecrate the worst part of their conduct!

In modern India, idolatry is exemplified on a scale scarcely less extensive; and everywhere it is marked by two leading qualities, cruelty and impurity. The Hindoo deities are of a ferocious and sanguinary character, and are supposed to drink out of the sculls of their victims. The more we become acquainted with these idolaters, like Ezekiel when he surveyed the chambers of imagery, we discover only the greater abominations. In their system, as connected with their conduct, there is a perpetual action and reaction; vice gene

rating idols, and idols fortifying vice. First, we find mere abstractions of the mind formed concerning the Deity; these are next imbodied in idols; and all the human passions are enlisted by devotion itself on the side of vice. Here, in a country influenced by the light of revelation, we are accustomed in all our ideas to associate religion and morality: we never suppose a religious man can be any other than a good moralist; when we see a person who fears God, and makes a conscience of thoughts, we never doubt that his practice is correct; his word is as an oath to us; because the standard he adopts is the Divine will, and he is himself a faint image and adumbration of the moral glory of God. But the fire of piety, instead of kindling, would only quench the fire of idolatry. A man must be unfitted for that worship in exact proportion to his fear and love of God. The image of Satan must displace the image of God in the heart of every idolater.

II. Hitherto we have attended to a melancholy subject, and have seen only the nakedness and degradation of our race. We must now more briefly advert to a brighter scene, presented by the prophet, when he assures us that Jesus Christ (of whom he is speaking) will utterly abolish idolatry, and sweep it from the face of the earth with the besom of destruction; not a worshipper of idols shall be left at last, but His wrath shall consume that man. In sending the gospel to the heathen, you offer, as it were, the holy incense, like Moses, when he interposed between God and the perishing Israelites: you stand, like him, between the dead and the living,-the dead and the living for eternity! and you stay the plague!

No sooner did Christianity appear, than its formidable power, as the opponent of idolatry, was felt and manifested. Pliny, writing about seventy years after the death of Christ, declared to the Emperor Trajan, that in the province of Bithynia, where he presided as proconsul, the temples were nearly deserted: a striking proof how rapidly the system of paganism gave way before the sword of the Spirit wielded by the primitive missionaries. One unhappy exception, indeed, still remains, in the idolatrous worship of the Romish church; but the triumphs of the gospel are advancing, and as we have lately seen the islands of the South Sea casting away their ancient idols to the moles and to the bats, so shall every system of idolatry and false worship be utterly and for ever overthrown.

Preaching, an instrument so unpromising in the view of carnal reason, has been the chief instrument employed in producing these moral revolutions. When, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God,-when the only Being against whom all conspired was the Maker of all, and men proved themselves to be blind at noonday,— it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. Nothing but this can save them: wo be to that man who teaches that there is any other method of salvation than the preaching Jesus Christ. This is the instrument which God has crowned with success. Before

See the note at page 513.

the rising Sun of Righteousness, idolatry melted away as wax before the fire; and effects the reverse of those produced by that baneful system attend the beneficent progress of the gospel. Cruelty and impurity disappear in holiness and brotherly love. Christianity, instead of severing the ties of nature, harmonizes and unites the most distant from each other, as brethren; according to the design of our Saviour, that he should gather together in one the children of God, that were scattered abroad: while those who before were stained with every vice are purified in their hearts and conduct by the influence of heavenly truth.

In proportion, my brethren, as you value the blessings of religion, you will wish that others should partake them with yourselves: in proportion as you are disposed to pray, Lord, evermore give us this bread, you will desire to communicate it to all besides. You will love

your brethren, as you love your Saviour, not having seen either: if you have been divinely taught, this will be your feeling in regard to all mankind. That man's heart is not right with God who can look unmoved upon the vast heathen world, lying dead in trespasses and sins: dead by a moral, a voluntary death, such as cannot be pleaded in arrest of the Divine judgment. But though they have destroyed themselves, in God is their help; he has laid help on one that is mighty to save, even to the uttermost. The Father has appointed his beloved Son to be the dispenser of all spiritual blessings, as Pharaoh appointed Joseph to be the dispenser of bread to the perishing Egyptians; and, as Pharaoh answered every application by saying, "Go to Joseph;" the Father says to sinners, Go to Jesus Christ with all your wants; no man can come to the Father but by him. He is the ark, in which all the hopes, all the treasures of human nature are reposited; in him is all the fulness of God.

A cause so great and sacred as that of Christianity absorbs all those differences and divisions, of a minor kind, that exist among us; and I trust and believe there is not a missionary of our own Baptist communion who would not infinitely prefer the conversion and salvation of one soul, to making the whole heathen world adopt our views of a disputed and comparatively inconsiderable ceremony. If there is such a man, I am no party to his sentiment; there exists no communion between us; let not my soul enter into that man's secret! No, my dear brethren! we, I trust, have far higher views; the only kind of proselytes we desire to make are proselytes to God and Jesus Christ! In the promotion of such a cause we are ready to forget our own denomination, and to co-operate with every other; we feel that, with such an object proposed, were we to sit still, the very stones in our streets would cry out, and almost rise up into Bibles and missionaries! Contribute, brethren, to the support and extension of this sacred enterprise, and you will convert uncertain riches into the means of bestowing the true riches,-of diffusing the unsearchable riches of Christ; your contributions will become, in the hand of God, Bibles, instructions, prayers, sermons, the messengers of saving mercy to many immortal souls.

XX.

CHRIST'S MISSION FOR THE ADOPTION OF SONS IN THE FULNESS OF TIME.*

GAL. iv. 4, 5.—But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

[PREACHED AT MELBOURNE, NEAR ROYSTON, SEPTEMBER, 1827.]

THE Galatians, among whom Paul had taught the religion of Christ, were soon led astray as to some of its most essential and important doctrines, by the arts of Judaizing teachers.

They admitted and inculcated the obligation of circumcision and other ceremonies of the ancient law, maintaining that without these men could not be saved; thereby vacating and superseding the sacrifice of Christ, and denying the sufficiency of his mediation and death for the salvation of sinful men. Of these Paul testified, that if any man submitted to circumcision on this ground, with a view to procure acceptance with God, or as any ingredient of justification in his sight, for such a person Christ had died in vain. He subverts the only foundation laid in Zion, by mixing those observances of the law of Moses which were typical of Christ and his kingdom, with his satisfaction, as the ground of acceptance with the just and holy God.

In order to recall the Galatians from these errors, he directs their attention in the words just read, to the great and fundamental doctrine of Christ's incarnation and atonement, to its completeness and efficacy, not only in saving us from guilt and condemnation, but in reinstating us in the Divine favour, and bestowing on us inexpressible privileges: admission into his family and the reception of that spirit of adoption which is the spirit of his Son, whereby Christians feel the dispositions and perform the duties of obedient children to their heavenly Father. "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons; and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

In these words there are three things that demand our attention : I. The mission of Jesus Christ, and the manner in which he manifested himself.

II. The design of his mission; "to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."

* Printed from the notes of the Hon. Mr. Baron Gurney.