their statesmanship be reviled or praised. In this statue-however skillful the sculptor's imitationthere is no life; no speech breaks from these mute lips; the limbs seem instinct with power, yet they never leave their pedestal; no fire flashes in the dull, gray eyes, nor passions burn within the stony breast. The stone is deaf, and dumb, and dead. In grief's wild and frantic outbursts affection may address the the form of one deeply loved, and for ever lamented. Speak to it, it returns no answer; weep to it, it sheds no tears; image of a lost and loved one, it feels not the grief that itself can move. Now, how many sit in the house of God as unmoved? Careless as mere spectators who have no concern in what takes place before them, they take no interest in any thing that was done on Calvary! Is it not sad to think that more tears are shed in playhouses than in churches; and that by those who call themselves Christians, the new novel is sought more eagerly, and devoured more greedily than the New Testament? What a deplorable account of the human heart! One would think it is of stones, and yet it is of living men, too like, alas to many of ourselves-these words are spoken "Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not; neither do they understand."

We have described a stone as cold, hard, dead. Is this, some may ask, a fair and just picture of the human heart? The question is a fair one, and deserves a frank answer. I should hinder a cause I desire to help, and do injustice to divine truth, were I to answer that question by simply affirming, that the picture is a true portrait of the natural heart in all its sentiments and emotions. Human nature is bad enough without exaggerating its evils. There is no

need to exaggerate them. In one sense, they do not admit of exaggeration. And, if we dared, instead of exaggerating, we should be happy to excuse them, and to our mother nature, render the kind and filial office of casting a cloak upon her shame.

We know as well as others do, and would ever remember, that although man be dead to gracious affections, until sin has had "its perfect work," he is not dead to many tender and lovely emotions of nature. Many beauties are lingering about this ruinthe engaging, but melancholy vestiges of its former glory. We freely admit, that, so far as regards father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, and the beloved friends of our social circles, an unrenewed heart may be the warm nest of kindliest affections. There can be no doubt, I think, that the Christian will prove the best father, the best husband, the best wife, the best master, the best servant, the best citizen, the truest, trustiest friend. Nay, for their pith and truth, notwithstanding their homeliness, I will venture to quote the words of Rowland Hill, who said, "I would give nothing for the Christianity of a man whose very dog and cat were not the better of his religion." Still, it is no treason against the Gospel to believe that one, yet unhappily a stranger to the grace of God, may be endowed with many most pleasant and lovely virtues.

Away among the rough moors, by the banks of tumbling river, or the skirts of green wood, or on sloping acclivity, or steep hill-side, we have gathered, remote from gardens and the care of men, bunches of wild flowers, which, although very perishing, were exquisitely beautiful, and steeped in fragrant odors; and such as these are some men and women, who have never yet been transplanted from a state of nature

into a state of grace. There is no sin in loving them. In the young ruler who declined to take up his cross and follow Christ, was not there so much that was amiable, gentle, lovely, that Jesus' own heart was drawn to him? It is said that he loved him;" and the emotions of a Saviour's bosom cannot be wrong in mine. Nor is his a rare phenomenon a solitary case. We have seen men who made no great profession of religion, who certainly were not pious, but who were yet so kind, tender, affectionate, generous, large-hearted, and open-handed, that it was impossible not to love them. Nature never asked our permission. Whether we would or not, we felt drawn to them, as Jesus was to the amiable youth who refused to follow him. And as we have rooted up from the moor some wild flower to blow and shed its fragrance in a sweeter than its native home, have we not longed to do the same with these fine specimens of the natural man? Transplanted by grace into the garden of the Lord, baptized with the dews of heaven, converted to the faith, they would be flowers fit to form a wreath for the brow that men wreathed with thorns. I am compelled to acknowledge that I have known some, whom even charity could not reckon among true Christians, who, yet in point of natural virtues, put Christians to shame. In some beautiful traits they were more like Jesus than not a few of his real disciples.

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Let there be no mistake, then; when I speak of the heart as a stone, I am looking at it as it looks on God, a Saviour, salvation, and eternity. However distressing it is (and it is most distressing) to think that persons otherwise most lovely and of most loving hearts are so cold and callous to the claims of Jesus, yet, so far as divine love to sinners, and so far as the kind

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nesses of saving mercy are concerned, I am convinced that among the rocks which beat back the roaring sea -up in the crags where dews, and rain, and bright sunbeams fall-down in earth's darkest and deepest mines, there lies bedded no stone colder, harder, less impressible; more impenetrable, than an unrenewed heart. Does unbelief suggest the question, Why, then, preach to the unconverted? as well preach to stones? as well knock with thy hand upon a door which is locked on a coffin and a corpse? In a sense, true; and altogether true, but for the promise“ Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.?? That promise is the soul of hope and the life of preaching. It forbids despair. And should coward ministers, yielding to despair, hold their tongues, and pulpits all be silent, Christ still were preached. Strange evangelists would start up in these streets to break this awful, unbelieving silence. Asked by an envious priesthood to silence the hosannas; of the multitude, Jesus turned on them and said," I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." Thus assured, not only of our children, not only of our people, not only of the dead womb of Sarah, but of the very stones of the street, that "God can raise up children to Abraham, despair we cannot feeland dumb we cannot be. He who shall raise the dead in church-yards can waken the dead in churches. Therefore we expect conversions and in hope offer Christ to the chief of sinners, be seeching you, "Be ye reconciled to God.

The New Heart.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.—EZEKIEL Xxxvi. 26.

As in a machine where the parts all fit each other, and, bathed in oil, move without din or discord, the most perfect harmony reigns throughout the kingdom of grace. Jesus Christ is the "wisdom," as well as the "power" of God; nor in this kingdom is any thing found corresponding to the anomalies and incongruities of the world lying without. There we sometimes see a high station disgraced by a man of low habits; while others are doomed to an inferior condition, who would shine like gilded ornaments on the very pinnacles of society. That beautiful congruity in Christ's kingdom is secured by those who are the objects of saving mercy being so renewed and sanctified that their nature is in harmony with their position, and the man within corresponds to all without.

Observe how this property of new runs through the whole economy of grace. When Mercy first rose upon this world, an attribute of Divinity appeared which was new to the eyes of men and angels. Again, the Saviour was born of a virgin; and He who came forth from a womb where no child had been previously conceived, was sepulchred in a tomb where no man had been previously interred. The Infant had a new birth-place, the Crucified had a new burial-place.