The First Deist

Lsr the history of our first parents, the first birth must have been an event of deep interest. What mother, from the days of Eve to the present hour, ever realized such an event without those commingled emotions of solicitude, tenderness, responsibility, and joy, which none but the heart of a parent knows? Cain and Abel, it has been generally believed, were twin brothers. Two flowers there were that thus early bloomed on this barren earth, though the flowers of Eden were thus blighted. The “mother of all living” looked upon her first-born, and exclaimed in transports of gladness, “I have gotten a man from the Lord!” There was nature in all this; and was there not faith in it also? God had said,” I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, (J THE FIRST DEIST.

and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This promise of the Messiah was not given to a reprobate. Our first parents were to be the founders of true religion in the very world upon which they had brought the curse of their apostasy; and this simple and childlike exclamation of Eve, while it evinces her gratitude and a sweet sense of her dependence, shows that she was no castaway. Nor is it at all improbable, that these few words contained the germ of a stronger faith, and that she had the secret hope that her first-born son was the promised “seed of the woman.”

It is an interesting fact, that God was not pleased to give our first parents posterity, until he had revealed this gracious promise; and it is a delightful truth, in its relations to those who die in infancy, that no child of Adam was ever born, except under the mediatorial reign of the promised Saviour. Cain and Abel began their existence under tho announced reign of this Prince of Peace; yet, as they commenced it under a broken covenant, they inherited the character, not of their unfallen, nor of their restored parents, but the character which they possessed as fallen and depraved creatures.

We know little of the early history of these two first-born of the human family; the brief hints furnished by the sacred historian, show that they were very different men. It is obvious from the whole narrative that they were religiously educated, and that they employed their religious training to very different ends. Their parents were acquainted with God, and had cultivated the most delightful intimacy with him before they fell. They were unhappily too well acquainted with the snares of the tempter; and God had graciously made them acquainted with the way of salvation by his Son, and with the only way of worshipping him acceptably and with godly fear. These great truths they could not but have instilled into the minds of their children, by example, instruction, and prayer.

Religious instruction, even where most faithfully imparted, exerts a widely different influence upon different minds. This difference was strongly marked in the character of Cain and Abel. Abel was a pious young man; Cain was ungodly. Abel was a believer in God’s truth; Cain was an unbeliever. Abel was a Christian; Cain a Deist. Abel died an unnatural, yet a happy death; Cain lived to wander a vagabond in the earth, and died none can tell where, with this only epitaph upon his grave, “That wicked one, who slew his brother.” Nor was this first-born of the human family the last one of the race whose entrance into the world was greeted with exultation, but whose subsequent character and conduct overwhelmed his parents with the bitterness, the very anguish of grief.

We have said that Cain was a Deist, and that Abel was a Christian. Truth and error, Deism and Christianity, have essentially their own peculiar characteristics in all ages of the world. The Christianity of Abel was essentially the Christianity of Paul; while the Deism of Cain was essentially the Deism of Herbert, Blount, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Morgan, Chubb, and Bolingbroke. Christianity is the system of doctrines and precepts taught in the Holy Scriptures; and the Christian is one who believes and loves these doctrines, and obeys these precepts. Deism is the system which, while it acknowledges the existence of one God, denies a supernatural revelation. It is the belief in natural religion only, or in those truths which are discovered only. by the lights of reason and nature. The Deist is one who professes to follow these lights as his only guides. A cursory view of the character of Cain and Abel will justify the assertion, that while the former presents to us the first example of Deism, the latter furnishes us the first, among Adam’s descendants, who was an exemplification of Christianity.

We rest these positions on a brief narrative which we extract from the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis. “Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire; and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel, thy brother? And he said, I know not; am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

There is no such test of character as the revealed truth and will of God. They were revealed in order to influence the characters of men; while facts show that their characters are developed by nothing so certainly. Men are religious or irreligious, Christian or infidel, as they fall in, or fall out with God’s truth and God’s commands.

If we look into the Bible, we shall find that theions services of men are there regarded as unfailing indices of what they themselves are; and the reason of this is, that their religious services are so intimately connected with their views of divine truth, and their affections toward it. That the offerings of Cain and Abel were widely different, and indicated a widely different character in the offerers, is obvious from the fact, that the one was an accepted, while the other was a disapproved and rejected service. We are not informed what these tokens of the divine approbation and disapprobation were; it is not improbable that the offering of Cain was regarded with mortifying and stinging neglect; while fire descended from heaven to consume the offering of Abel, and the smoke of it went up as a “sweet-smelling savor.” Whence this difference in the divine conduct toward these early worshippers? A true answer to this inquiry will set the characters of these two men in their true light.

Here it is obvious to remark, that their offerings were presented with a very different state of mind. Both outwardly honored God. To the eye of man, both had the same object of worship, and both seemed to present an acceptable offering. If we cast our eyes over an assembly who come together for the worship of God, they all appear to j m »ssess the same religious character; while, in the eye of Him who seeth not as man seeth, there are the broad and deep lines of distinction which separate between his friends and his enemies. God requires and approves that which is holy. Though Abel was a sinner as well as Cain, there was something in his offering which God approved. This approbation was withheld from the offering of Cain, because it was destitute of holiness and a sinful sacrifice. God had no partiality for Abel, and no prejudice against Cain. He knew what was in the heart of both, and he treated both according to their character. The sacrifice of Abel was a sincere and honest sacrifice, and the true expression of a devout mind; the offering of Cain had the form of godliness, but was destitute of the

power.

It was highly important to the best interests of our race, that, since this difference existed in their character, it should be clearly brought out; and that God should thus early read this lesson to the world, that he has no pleasure in a heartless religion. A religion of forms, be it ever so natural to the human heart, and ever so splendid and imposing, so long as it has nothing to do with the heart, is a religion which God abhors. It is a religion to which he foresaw the family of man would be greatly exposed; and he thus early raised his warning voice against it. And how affecting and memorable is the admonition! We here behold one who is at heart a murderer, and who turns out to be a murderer, having all the appearance of a religious and devout man; making such an open avowal of his belief in the divine existence, and of his dependence upon him, that “he brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” He was an infidel at heart, notwithstanding all this fair show of piety. And God thus publicly exposed his hypocrisy. He accepted the sacrifice of Abel, and with his sacrifice accepted also his person. While Cain was cast out of the divine family as a guilty and accursed man, Abel was adopted into it, and had the place and privileges of an adopted child. Cain found no access to God in this act of worship; there was everything in his own state of mind that was to the last degree forbidding to this delightful fellowship. Guilt created suspicion; suspicion, enmity; and enmity, persevering and irreclaimable alienation. Abel had every token of the divine favor, every hope and every promise; Cain had no such hope and no such promise, no such support in life or in death, no such holiness and heaven. His offering and his person were rejected of God. It struck him to the heart that God should make such a difference. He was the first-born, and it excited his jealousy that God should thus give the preference to the younger before the older; or that, in a religious service, he should have the preference at all. He was sad, his countenance fell, he was displeased and irritated, because God thus rightfully gave the preference to his brother’s offering. God claimed the heart of Abel, and Abel gave him his heart. God claimed also the heart of Cain; and though he had brought all the fruits of the earth and laid them on the altar, God would have said to him as he did to the Jews, in the days of the prophet, “Bring no more vain oblations.” The religion of a Deist is like the religion of Cain.

The subject matter of their offerings was also essentially different. “Cain brought of the fruits of the ground an offering unto the Lord;” Abel brought “of the firstlings of his flock, and the fat thereof.” The offering of Cain appears to the eye of human reason the more natural one of the two. And here was his error; he followed the leadings of his blinded reason. “The world by wisdom knew not God.” The light of nature shows man that he has sinned, but does not show him how he may find mercy. God is holy, and cannot look on sin; man is sinful, vile to abjectness, and desperately wicked. Between reflections upon the character of God and the character of man, human reason sees no ground for hope. Man wants a religion, which God will accept; and would fain offer religious services that will be acceptable to God. This is a discovery which human reason cannot make; left to itself, its devotions are undevout; its worship, sin; its piety impious; its religion an outrage upon the divine rectitude.

The field of human invention in this article of man’s relation to the Deity began to be very early explored; nor did its discoveries differ widely from the rationalism and deism of subsequent ages. The savage of the desert satisfies himself with offering to God the fruits of his harvest-field; the more enlightened rationalist of the present age satisfies himself with offerings which have no respect to Him, through whom alone there is access; while the self-righteous religionist satisfies himself with going about to establish a righteousness of his own, by the deeds of the law. The veriest infidel is satisfied with such a religion. Human reason is never more at fault, than when it sets itself to invent for itself a religion. It is the mere religion of thought and intellect; it has no solace for the conscience, and leaves the soul barren, and feeding on husks. It exerts no practical influence. It neither enlightens, nor converts, nor comforts, nor sanctifies. It is the merest delusion, if a man satisfy himself with such a religion. He may have sensibility and emotion, but they are not right emotions. They may rise to transcendental hopes, and romantic joys; but they are mere excitement, and leave the soul under the dominion of sin. Men are now, and ever have been prone to devise their own systems of religious worship, in opposition to the only acceptable worship which God has revealed in his word. There is nothing for which they more need the divine direction, and a special revelation from heaven, than to enable them to answer the inquiry, “Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the most high God?” They must be instructed by heavenly love and wisdom; else will their own ignorance, and error, and presumption, lead them farther from God in those very acts of religious worship by which they propose to draw nigh to him.

This instruction God condescended to give to Cain and Abel. The foundation of all acceptable worship was laid in the promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. Without this they had been without hope. God early taught them to draw nigh to him through the promised Saviour, and in the offering of those sacrifices which prefigured the Christian atonement.

The institution of sacrifices was as old as the introduction of sin; the necessity of them is founded upon the fact that man is a sinner. “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.” It is “the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.” We find, that Adam and Eve, immediately after their apostasy, instead of remaining covered with their scanty protection of fig-leaves, were covered with the skins of animals. Yet, at that period, the original grant for food was confined to the vegetable creation; the permission of it was not until after the flood. The inference is a natural one, if not unavoidable, that the skins with which they were clothed were those of animals which, by the divine appointment, were offered in sacrifice. This truth is strongly implied in the phraseology, that “God made coats of skins and clothed them.” It was not their own invention, nor their own work; they had no right, of their own will, to slay the lambs of the flock for this, or for any other purpose; it was of God’s invention and God’s appointment. God thus taught them that the foundation of their hope was not only in the promised seed of the womam, but in the sacrifice of that promised Saviour. The sacrifices he thus appointed shadowed forth to them the necessity and the reality of that one great sacrifice which took the place of all others, the blood of which possessed a higher value than the blood of bullocks and of goats.

This was their religion, and this the way in which they drew nigh to God. This was the religion which God taught them, and which they taught these two sons. And this is the only religion the Bible knows, and the only religion that meets the exigencies of men as sinners. Here there is a refuge for the guilty. Here is that victim whose blood speaketh better tilings than the blood of Abel, and which has made all the reparation which the most excited conscience demands. The devices of men here disappear before the wisdom of God. Here are pardon, and holiness, and eternal life. A religion that does not accomplish this is no religion; it is infidelity; it is deism, which leaves the dark, unpardoned, uncomforted, depraved mind, still dark, and without God and hope.

This is the religion which Abel accepted and practised, and which was rejected by Cain; and therefore, we say that the one was a deist, and the other was a Christian.

Behold in Cain the first deist which the world ever saw. It is a melancholy fact, that this first-born of man should have been a deist; yet was he a worthy representative of those who reject the religion of Christ, and lean to their own understanding and the inventions of men. This is the distinguishing characteristic of all deists. Amid all the various phases which their systems exhibit, the one and main object of them all is to set aside the Christian revelation, and substitute natural religion, the religion of reason, the religion of Cain in its place. Herbert professes to believe in God, but regards the doctrines of Christianity as fables and dreams. Blount assails the doctrine of a Mediator as unworthy of God, and magnifies the oracles of reason. The Earl of Shaftesbury, with a force and elegance of diction that might have been better employed, ridicules Christianity and extols the religion of paganism. Tlnclal professes a regard for Christianity, but a higher regard for reason and nature. This was deism, and this was the religion of Cain. He reasoned as the great mass of deistical and Unitarian writers have reasoned, in their rejection of that propitiation for sin which God has set forth. He professed to be a religious man; but he chose to worship God in his own way, guided by the lights of reason and nature, to the utter contempt of that worship revealed by God in his word.

Behold now in Abel, the first descendant of Adam who was a Christian. He believed the record which God had given of his son, in the first promise. We have an apostle’s testimony for this, where he asserts, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” He worshipped God, and made this early expression of his homage and devotement, by going to God in the name, and with a trusting confidence in the redemption of his Son. He offered the firstlings of his flocks. Reason and nature gave him no warrant to do this. It was a most unnatural offering; nor would the thought have once entered into his mind, nor would he have cherished it, had he not been instructed by God himself. Such a sacrifice could not have been acceptable, had it not been of divine appointment. God himself has said, “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” It were a vain sacrifice, if it had been an invention of his own; it was an accepted sacrifice, and the conclusion is irresistible that it was of divine appointment. He offered it “by faith;” and faith, we are told, “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” He was the first descendant of Adam, who, with his own hands, shed the blood of the innocent for the guilty, and thereby expressed his faith in him whose blood cleanseth from all sin. This gave his offering the preeminence. God’s method of grace was thus early recorded, so that the truth might never be lost siofht of that “there is no other name given under heaven among men,” whether Jew or Gentile, whether in the early dawn of time, or in these last days, but the name of Jesus Christ. This godly young man thus found peace and pardon, and became prepared for his early, and sudden, and cruel death. The blow that severed him from earth, translated him to heaven. It was a dark hour that came upon him as he wandered in unsuspecting confidence with that deistical and murderous brother; it was an unlooked for cloud — a rushing tempest; but it bore him to his rest. So long as the names of Cain and Abel are remembered among men, will it be known that there is a difference between Christianity and Deism; and that while the deist is a vagabond in the earth, and dies an exile from God’s family; the Christian is God’s own child, and be the earthly house of his tabernacle gradually dissolved, or rudely torn down, he has a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

But the most important thought on this part of our subject, is the most familiar thought; nor may I express it without somewhat more illustration than the hints just suggested. The Scriptures reveal two opposite states of mind in men toward themselves. There is a state of moral feeling which is expressive only of self-confidence; it is a self-righteous and self-justifying spirit; a spirit’ which leads them to hope for acceptance with God because they are not so bad as other men. It wearies itself by seeking to be justified before God by prayers, and offerings, and meritorious works and deeds of the law. Such was the spirit of the young ruler, whose boast was, “All these things have I done from my youth up; what lack I yet?” Such was the spirit of the Pharisee, who stood praying in the temple, when he ventured to appeal to his Maker and say, “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men;” and such was the spirit of the Pharisees generally, who “made their boast of honoring the law.” Such was eminently the spirit of Saul of Tarsus, who “boasted in himself that he was righteous, and despised others.” On the other hand, there is a state of feeling which every right-hearted man has toward himself, which is the opposite of all this. God often speaks of this state of mind in his word, and of the necessity of possessing it, because, without it, no man feels his need of Jesus Christ as his Saviour. It was the spirit of the Psalmist, when he said, “I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be clear when thou speakest, and just when thou judgest.” It was the spirit of the prodigal when he exclaimed, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” It was the spirit of the publican, when he smote upon his breast and said, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Such was the spirit of Abel. This is evinced by the fact, that his offering was made in faith in the “blood of sprinkling.” Of all the Christian graces, the most confiding is the most humble. The grand sentiment of faith is that the sinner is ill-deserving, and that salvation is all of grace. A self-complacent, self-righteous, self-justifying faith in the Lamb of God as the propitiation for sin is as great an absurdity, as words can express. Sin makes the sinner vile, and justice sinks him low. The humility which godly men exercise consists in that self-ahasement which sinks them as low as their iniquity abases them; which justifies the condemning sentence of the divine law; and which looks with hope only toward God’s holy hill, where the appointed and bleeding victim pays the ransom, and where “grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Without this spirit, God could not have accepted Abel’s offering; Abel himself would not have offered the lamb in sacrifice. Never could he have taken the knife to slay the innocent for the guilty, had he not possessed a true sense of his sins, and an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. Gam, on the other hand, had none of this spirit. He presented his offering of the fruits of the ground with all the self-complacency and self-righteousness of a man who felt that his good works and religious services gave him a claim of right to the divine acceptance. He had persuaded himself, notwithstanding a murderous heart throbbed within his bosom, that he had virtues, and merits, and a title to the divine favor, which it would be injustice to deny. He relied upon his supposed and assumed worthiness of the divine favor, to the contempt of that only method of mercy and acceptance which God had thus early appointed, through the merits of another. He had no true knowledge of his sin and guilt, and no sense of his need of mercy through the woman’s seed, even though he himself was so vile. He had not one self-abasing emotion. He knew not what it was to repent himself of his wickedness, humble himself before God, and seek his pardoning mercy. He put himself upon his rights, and God left him to maintain his rights as best he could. He put himself upon law and justice, and God tried him, and gave him law and justice. His offering was rejected. And when he saw that he was condemned, “his countenance fell.” His wrath was kindled against God; his hands were full of blood. He turned away and persevered in his infidelity. The means of grace and salvation were still at his door; but he neglected them, abused them, despised them, and became “a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction.” And such is the history of every man who ultimately rejects the salvation of the gospel. He that is not for Christ, is against him. There is no middle ground between believing and disbelieving; no half-way house between Christianity and infidelity.

We dwell on one more thought, before we draw the curtain on the history of these two young men. It is a question of interest, How came they thus to differ in their character and end? I speak not now of the grace that made the Christian differ from the Deist; of that I shall have to speak more largely in our next chapter. I speak of the means, the instrumental causes, the more remote agencies which exerted so powerful an influence.

It was not a difference in their religious education; for they were both the children of the same parents, both beloved, and both enjoying the same religious example, instruction, and prayers. This great fact should ever be borne in mind, and it is among the first things which the early history of our race discloses, that the same religious instruction of ten produces widely different results.

When we consider the direful effects of the first apostasy, and what a wreck it has made of the heart of man, it is not unnatural to conclude that the truth of God should make impressions, for weal or for woe, on every mind to which it has access. It accords with the method of divine grace, that where it is received, it exerts a progressive influence; while it accords with the intellectual and moral nature of fallen man, that where it is rejected, it gradually loses its force, and hardens the heart. While it becomes the natural aliment of one class of minds, and they live and grow upon it; in the opposite class it excites hostility, provokes resistance, and awakens slumbering wickedness. Those there are who never grow so rapidly in sin, and become so precociously ripe for destruction, as when they become blighted in their youth, and their dry and fruitless branches are spread out under the dews and rains of heaven. Facts, from the days of Cain to the present hour, abundantly illustrate these observations. Truth is a two-edged sword; it always wounds. It is “a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one it is the savor of death unto death; to the other the savor of life unto life.”

Cain was not an uninstructed man. Some of the most wonderful facts, and some of the most amazing truths, had been spread before his mind. He was the first-born of the race, and lived amid wonderful realities. A field of thought Was presented to his view, which, if he had not trodden under his feet, would have yielded flowers and fruit; to him it was a barren waste. And this is one of the reasons why, with all his religious instructions, he became a deist. He hated the truth of God.

He had also a strong desire to get rid of moral obligation. This is always one of the motives to infidelity. When men now read the Scriptures, and listen to a preached gospel, they feel the obligation to become Christians; and they can think of no method by which they can so effectually weaken and destroy this sense of obligation, as by disbelieving what they read and hear. They try to disbelieve it; and they often pretend to have brought their minds into this state of unbelief, because it emboldens them to cast off the sense of religious obligation. Men who hate to feel the obligations of true piety, are driven to this resort for the sake of silencing their own consciences. Cain well knew the religion of his parents; but he was a bold free-thinker, and resolved not to be under any such bonds.

Nor is it at all improbable that he prided himself upon his peculiar way of thinking. It is quite likely that he set himself to oppose the religious views of Abel, and exerted his ingenuity in calling in question the reasonableness of the sacrifice offered by his believing brother. He took pleasure in contradicting the received religion of his family, in marking out a path for himself, and, instead of following in their steps, setting himself up as the great leader of infidelity.

Cain was moreover a very wicked man; and this was the true source of his deistical views. His subsequent conduct shows what he was; and in view of it, it is not unnatural to ask, how could such a man be anything else than a deist? “Light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” This is the cause of all the infidelity in the world. Wicked men, if they mean to remain wicked, will not become Christians.

We plead guilty to the charge of uttering no new truths in the present chapter; we do not plead guilty to the utterance of truths that are unimportant. The great object of God’s revelation is to disclose the method of acceptance with him. The fact is a solemn and affecting one, that men are sinners. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Angels found it so when they fell, and were thrust down in chains of darkness. Our first parents found it so, when they were doomed to wander in a world that was cursed for their sake, to go down to the grave, and to be righteously exposed to the wrath and curse of God. All have found it so who have lived and died in sin, and now have their abode in the world where “the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.1’ Every man will find it so who does not seasonably admit the inquiry,” How shall I find acceptance with God? what hope is there for such a sinner? He may well take heed, in considering this question, how he confides in the traditions, or commandments of men, or to the delusions of the adversary, and his own wicked heart. If some there be who say, there is no occasion for solicitude in respect to this matter; they may not be believed. It is an easy thing to be deceived with regard to one’s own character. Men are sufficiently inclined to think well of themselves. Cain marvelled that he was not accepted. If there be those who flatter themselves that it is enough to reform their habits of outward sin, and be more attentive to the external duties of morality and religion; we have nothing to say against such reform and such seriousness; they are greatly needed. But these give no answer to the great question, how shall I find acceptance with God? Cain did this, and yet was the vagabond of his race. Most seasonable are those counsels of heavenly wisdom which announce that one great sacrifice, and tells of him who is the only way, the new and living way. There is no holiness, no pardon, no peace, no heaven, where is no atoning Saviour. There is but this one foundation of hope. There is but this one gospel, and this one system of truth and duty. Nor is there any embarrassment on this great subject if men will go to the word of God. Abel, though dead, “yet speaketh,” and shows the way of life.

Those who, like Cain, follow their own fancies in opposition to the instructions of heavenly wisdom; who devise a religion of their own in neglect of that which God has revealed; who trust in refuges of lies, and turn away from the only hope set before them in the gospel, show what is in their hearts, and that they possess a character which is unfitted for the kingdom of God. This was the test that brought out the true character of Abel and Cain; and it is equally decisive in its application to ourselves. .Abel fell in with the method of redemption revealed, obscurely as it was, in that early age of the world; Cain fell out with it; and their course of conduct toward that great Sacrifice decided their character. We also have the same test, more clearly revealed, and therefore more easily applied. A method of salvation has been disclosed to our fallen world which is the wonder of the universe. It is the wonder of God’s wondrous government, that he can maintain his truth and justice, and yet pardon and save such creatures as his truth and justice condemn. God manifest in the flesh, Deity united with humanity — an atoning sacrifice by the death of the crosssalvation by that cross, through faith in the name of the great Sufferer, — these are the truths which are stumbling-blocks and foolishness to the men of the world; and to those who believe the wisdom of God and the power of God. Let every man ask himself how he is affected by them? what interest do they awaken in his bosom? what hopes does he build upon them? A true answer to these questions decides his character and destiny. If he revolts from these great truths and such a method of mercy as too humbling to human reason to be received, and still more humbling to the pride of his heart; and if he continues so to do, he puts himself beyond the reach of reform, and beyond the possibility of acceptance with God. He treads under his feet the blood of the Son of God, and in doing this he opposes and rejects that great goodness and mercy, that wondrous wisdom and glory of God manifested in the cross of his Son. No matter what else the sinner does, if he is hostile to this method of mercy, he is lost. No matter how good, how moral, how religious he is, if he rejects this method of mercy, he is lost. His acceptance or his rejection of this method of mercy decides his goodness, his morality, his religion, his eternal destiny.

The dwellers in these Christian lands occupy a high eminence of privilege, in that from Sabbath to Sabbath, from one new moon to another, Jesus Christ is evidently set forth crucified in the midst of them. Wisdom hath killed her beasts, and mingled her wine, and prepared her supper, and sent forth her messengers to say, All things are ready. Beware of turning a deaf ear to these solicitations of redeeming love. Beware of the guilt of Cain, lest you be partakers of his spirit, bear his woes, and become an eternal exile from the presence of God. His guilty course was coming to its maturity, when he deliberately rejected the truth, that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” Only to think of that state of mind in which a man regards himself as not needing an atonement! Do not thus trifle with this great Sacrifice. No, do this no longer. Relying on the help of Almighty grace, listen to the God of heaven and honor the sacrifice of his Son. If you say, “I am embarrassed; I know not what to do; I am in darkness ;. I cannot see my way clear:” then earnestly cry for light. Only let your heart be toward your duty and your Saviour, and light will soon shine upon your path. You will come to him as you are, because the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. You will come as you are, because he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. You will come as you are, because when we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. You will come as you are, and because you are poor, and miserable, and blind, and wretched and in want of all things, to be filled from his fulness, and be clothed upon with a righteousness that is not yours, but his who wrought and gives it; yes, he gives, freely gives it. It is all of grace, matchless, unmeasurable grace. You cannot purchase it, for it is above all price; the highest bidder for it will find that the greater Giver disdains a bribe. You cannot make yourself worthy of it, or in any way merit it, by waiting ever so long. The best deserve nothing but destruction. He gives it, and to those who see and feel that they have no righteousness of their own to plead; that they have nothing and are nothing; and that the most fitting qualification for receiving it, is a heart that gives him all the praise.