the confidence with which we feel ourselves to be secure against such temptations as have usually overcome others.

This confidence, extensively as it is cherished, is a violation of all good sense, and a contradiction to all experience. On what is it founded? On the apprehension which we entertain that we possess more prudence, firmness, and worth than any or all of those who have become victims to such temptations. What proofs have we that we possess this character? None. What is the sentence of reason? That self-confident men are always in danger and most easily overcome. What is that of Scripture?"Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed "lest he fall."

Fourthly, Another example of confiding in the goodness of our moral character is exhibited in the postponement of repentance to a future day.

There are two principal causes of this procrastination. We dislike the business to be done, and feel secure that we shall be both able and willing to do it hereafter. Both show in a strong light the miserable overweening of the procrastinator. Were he not blind, he would discern that the reasons will exist at every future period. We dislike repentance because we love sin. But we shall love sin to-morrow and every succeeding day, and love it with continually increasing strength. It will therefore prevent us from repenting to-morrow, as it has done to-day. All human experience proves this beyond every reasonable doubt. Yet in defiance of this experience in himself, and in all other men, the procrastinator secretly believes that to-morrow he shall love sin less, and be more willing to become a penitent. What is to produce this change in his character? The mere flux of time, the revolutions of the sun, the circuits of the minute hand on the face of a clock. But when and where have men become more prepared to repent by merely growing older? The procrastinator himself may not improbably answer, "Ne

Whence, then, does he expect to become a penitent on some future day? From his own peculiar wisdom and forecast, perfectly inefficacious to accomplish the end now, but by some magical process to be made completely efficacious at that happy period. How plainly is this expectation an abuse of all

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the dictates of common sense and common experience. an insult is it on the word of God! It is to trust, as the drunkard trusts, that the present cup will lead him back to sobriety, or as the thief, that stealing will make him an honest man.

II. I will now endeavour to show the folly of trusting in our own hearts.

First, In the common business of life it is certainly not true that our measures discover the superior wisdom and prudence which we challenge in our religious concerns. Were we to make the attempt, we shou'd be greatly at a loss for evidence that we rise above the average character of man. By those around us it will certainly not be acknowledged. Nor is it evidenced by any peculiar success in the execution of our plans. What then is the proof that it is just? The only answer is, “Our own opinion." By whom do we see this opinion most frequently and most forcibly manifested? The proverbial answer of common sense is, "By children and "fools." Do those, who by the public opinion, and their own success, are proved wise, exhibit it more or less than others? Every one of us will be obliged to answer, "The least of all "men." In our self-sufficiency, then, we are contrasted to the wise, and resemble children and fools.

If

What say the Scriptures? The text gives the answer. that is not sufficient, they add, with still more pungency, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more

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hope of a fool than of him." The only argument which can be alleged in the case, is that with which enthusiasts bolster themselves. They are possessed of divine communications, because they know it; and they know it, because they possess them. Deplorable proof of a deplorable opinion!

To trust in religious systems devised by ourselves is to contradict common sense. It is impossible that these systems should be true. We do not, and cannot, possess the knowledge which is indispensable to the formation of a system of religion. We cannot know the things out of which the system must be composed. We know neither the character of God, nor his will, nor his designs, nor the rules by which he

is to be worshipped, nor the rules of our conduct, nor the means of salvation, nor the attainableness of it by any means whatever.

Without these materials a religious system is nothing. But to attempt to form such a system without possessing the materials of which it is to be constituted, is to build a house without timber, brick, or stone. Fools only can be thus employed. Nor are those, who, professing to believe the Scriptures, pervert their declarations, in order to support schemes of religion devised by themselves, less openly at war with common sense than infidels themselves. In this case a being of yesterday rejects the counsels of the eternal God, acknowledges them to be his, and substitutes in their place his own imaginations. A worm lifts up his crest, and declares himself wiser than his maker.

Equally evident is the folly of those who confide in the goodness of their moral characters. We are not thus good. Sinners are sinners only. Righteous men are far less excellent than they are prone to think themselves, and ought always, when pondering their own character, to let their remaining corruptions hold a prominent place in their thoughts. "I "am unworthy of the least of all thy mercies," said Jacob. “Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer thee ?" said Job to his maker. "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did "my mother conceive me," said David. "To me belongeth "shame and confusion of face, because I have sinned," said Daniel. "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me "from the body of this death?" said St. Paul. So have said all the pious of every age; and the more pious, the more have they adopted the language of this humility.

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Second, It is folly because it is ruinous.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before "a fall." This inscription may with exact propriety be written upon every determination, and every effort, of self-confidence. For it is the general sentence of God on the spirit itself, and on all its undertakings. Evils ever present, and by a self-sufficient spirit ever unforseen, arrest the proud vain man in all the common business of life; and against them he

has made no provision. When warned of his danger, he only replies with the Pharisees, "Am I blind also ?" Hence he falls into a pit, which, if he would have opened his eyes, he might have shunned, and is entangled in snares, which men more modest and cautious easily escape.

In all the religious cases which I have specified the evil is still more certain, as well as more dreadful. False schemes of religion are of course fatal schemes. To trust in them is to trust in refuges of lies, which the hail shall sweep away. Truth only can conduct us to heaven, or to God; and human schemes of religion are of course not true. God will accept us on his own terms only, if at all; and these terms man cannot discover.

Besides, a self-sufficient proud spirit is pre-eminently odious to God. Pride was the sin of the fallen angels. It was the sin of our first parents. It is the sin of us, their children. It turned those angels out of heaven. It ruined Adam and his posterity. It will not, therefore, restore us to the favour of God.

REMARKS.

1. From these observations we learn that humility is a prime duty and interest of man.

Humility is merely a just sense of our character and circumstances, and a disposition conformed to it, a willingness to believe and to feel that we are what we really are. Think, then, I beseech you what we are. We sprang from the dust yesterday, to-morrow go to the grave. Our knowledge is limited to a few, a very few, objects, and bounded by a span. At the same time it is mingled with a multitude of errors, always mischievous, and very often fatal. Truth is invariably one and the same thing. But how widely diverse from one another are human opinions, and how widely diverse, of course, except a single system of opinions, from truth. That all but this system are erroneous is mathematically certain. Whether that system is true is yet to be determined.

Such is the state of our boasted reason. Our disposition is even more unhappy than our intellect. Ourselves we abuse, corrupt, and destroy. Our fellow-men we envy, hate, deceive, defraud, and oppress. God we either absolutely forget, or insult with impiety, ingratitude, and rebellion. Thus our character is odious, shameful, and sinful, in his sight, and in our own. He has most mercifully offered to restore us to piety, and to endless life, through the redemption of his Son, and the benevolent agency of his Holy Spirit. But we reject the offer, disbelieve his Son, and resist the influence of his Spirit. Our life, in the meantime, is a course of frailty, disease, pain, sorrow, and disappointment. The world is a vale of tears leading to the grave, to the judgment, and to everlasting woe. Of what then shall man be proud? Of his origin, his ignorance, his errors, his guilt, his misery, or his end? What greater folly can be conceived than this? How plainly ought such beings to be humble? How loudly do their character and their circumstances demand of them humility?

Humility renders us lovely. It recommends us to God; it secures us the esteem of our fellow-men; it reconciles us to ourselves. Every eye which looks on, perceives its beauty; every heart responds to its excellence.

At the same time, it is immeasurably profitable. It prepares us to perceive and welcome truth, evangelical truth, truth of infinite importance to us; breaks down our most obstinate and dangerous prejudices; makes us willing to perform our duty, and fits us for endless life. Humility, therefore, is true wisdom, indispensable to our well-being in time and eternity.

II. These observations teach us the chief origin of infidelity and heresy.

St. Paul long since styled infidelity philosophy and vain deceit,-a Hebraism to express a vain and deceitful philosophy. Arrogance began this scheme of thinking, and arrogance has brought it down to the present time. The whole body of infidels have ever been distinguished by their self-conceit from all other classes of men. Pride rises as a scum on all their books, and on all their conversation. The vanity which