past ingratitude has not drawn down upon you the sentence of disinheritance. Ere it go forth, turn to God, and let him have the undivided homage of your hearts. The promise which he gives you is as encouraging as it is free. O that it may seize the heart, and draw it up to God! "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."-" He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Amen.

SERMON XI.

PHILIPPIANS, iii. 3.-" We are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."

At first view, we cannot forbear regarding the controversies which agitated the Church in the days of the apostles with sentiments of regret, and lament that the servants of Jesus were so early called to repel and refute the opposition and the errors of gainsayers. The truth as it is in Jesus was so plainly and explicitly stated by the inspired instructors of the primitive Church, that we wonder how it could be misunderstood or misapplied; and the errors of the false teachers seem to us so palpable and revolting, that we are amazed how they could secure for a moment either credit or authority. And hence, instead of seeing the apostles engaged in combating and overturning the erroneous system which these indefatigable ministers of error sought to impose upon the Church, we are ready to wish that the preternatural endowments with which they were blessed had rather been employed in unfolding and applying the great truths of the Gospel, free from any allusion to division and debate, and that the Record of Eternal Life had come down to us without any memorial of human weakness.

But the ways of God are not as our ways, and "from seeming evil he still educes good." The errors which so early pestered and disturbed the Church occasioned those full and consolatory expositions of the Christian doctrine which we find in the epistolary writings of the New Testament. The absurd notions which many entertained concerning a sinner's justification called forth those luminous statements and illustrations of that momentous doctrine of the Christian faith which dropt from the pen of St Paul; while the incipient perversion and misapplication of it which troubled the infant Church called into exercise the inspired eloquence of St James to protect and guard it. The Judaising teachers were among the earliest and most inveterate troublers of the Church. The pertinacity with which they insisted on the continued obligation and observance of the ritual of Moses was the most distressing circumstance with which the primitive followers of Jesus had to contend: And yet it gave occasion to some of the most pointed and impressive delineations of the nature of Christianity and the character of its disciples which the pen of inspiration has recorded. In exposing and refuting the errors of these contaminators of the truth, the apostle is led to deliver those views of Christian doctrine and Christian practice which will be the guide and comfort of the faithful till the end of time. The sophistry of the Judaisers had found its way into the peaceful society of Philippi, and its members were in danger of being perverted from the simplicity of Christ. This event was in itself

troublesome and discouraging, and the enlightened and serious members of the Philippian Church must have viewed its operation with the most painful feelings; but it was overruled for good, and gave occasion to this pointed and instructive delineation of the Christian character which we have chosen as the subject of meditation at this time.

To ingratiate themselves into favour with the Philippians, these perverters of the truth had insinuated that their observance of the various rites of Judaism proved their lineal and legitimate descent from Abraham, and constituted those who imbibed their sentiments and imitated their example the only true Church of God. The apostle, in the strongest terms, reprobates this doctrine, and warns those to whom that Epistle is addressed to be on their guard against the abettors and expounders of it: "Beware," says he, "of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the excision." These are strong terms, but they are all most significant and descriptive of the character of these false teachers, and of the doom which awaited them. The term " DOGS," how strange soever it may seem to sound in our ears, was employed by our Lord to designate the opposers of the truth in his day; and here it most strikingly intimates that restless and persecuting bigotry which marked the conduct of these enemies of Christian liberty. The DANGER which the propounding of their doctrine threatened to the Church merited for them the denomination of "evil workers;" while the forfeiture of the Divine regard, and the certainty of the Divine judgments which they

had provoked and incurred, show the propriety of denouncing them" the EXCISION." And, still farther to expose their folly, and to guard the Philippians against its contamination, the apostle reminds them that the outward rite of circumcision was significant of personal purity and self-denial, and that, where these were wanting, the external ordinance could be of no avail. The word CIRCUMCISION is here used as a general and compendious designation of the true Church. The Judaising teachers insinuated that they were the circumcision, or the members of the true Church of God, because they observed with punctilious scrupulosity the ritual ordinances which Moses had enjoined; while those who contended for the abolition of the Mosaic ceremonial, or omitted the observance of it, were regarded as unworthy of the Divine favour.

This was an error which the apostle had frequently resisted and opposed. In writing to the Church at Rome, he warns them most solemnly against it: "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." And it is a similar warning that he here addresses to the Philippian church: "We are the circumcision," the true members of Christ's Church, whom he acknowledges here, and will bless and reward hereafter,-not, who observe the ceremonial institutions of Moses and run the round of external observances,-but," who worship God in