Sermons preached in St. James's Chapel, Clapham, Surrey. By the Rev. Charles Bradley, Vicar of Glasbury, Brecknockshire, and Minister of St. James's Chapel. 8vo. Pp. xii. and 414. Hamilton. 1831.

Sermons. By the Rev. R. C. Dillon, M. A. Minister of Charlotte Chapel, Pimlico; alternate Morning Preacher at the Asylum for Female Orphans; and Minister of the Evening Service at St. James's Church, Clerkenwell. 8vo. Pp. xviii. and 458. Cochran.

1831.

The Chief Concerns of Man for Time and Eternity. Being a course of Valedictory Discourses preached at Wheler Chapel, in the autumn of 1830. By the Rev. E. Bickersteth, Rector of Watton, Hertfordshire. 12mo. Pp. xii. and 308. Seeleys. 1831.

THE greatest orator of antiquity when asked what was the first, second, third point, essential to that art for which he was so distinguished, is said to have replied to each successive inquiry, Action ;— Action; and accordingly it will be found at the present day that some preachers of very high name are more indebted to their action, that is, to their delivery, than to any intrinsic excellence which their discourses possess; and we are therefore more amused than surprised at the high indignation often expressed against such works as the Pulpit, &c. for garbling or caricaturing sermons, which after all are reported with a very surprising degree of accuracy, however questionable or improper may be the motives or the conduct of the several reporters. Out of the evil, however, good will doubtless proceed; the empty declaimer may learn that something more than action or delivery is essential to the

permanence of popularity; the unblushing retailer of the sermons of Dwight, Robert Hall, Jeremy Taylor, &c. &c. will discover that there is some danger of his borrowed feathers being plucked off, and himself made the object of pity throughout the empire, and the man of real attainments and piety, will be stimulated to that continued diligence in reading, study, meditation, and careful preparation, without which no man, however great his talents or eminent his attainments, can long continue to preach with acceptance to the same congregation.

We are happy to record these observations on an occasion like the present, when we have before us the publications of three eminently distinguished individuals, whose diligence in study, and laborious devotion to their proper business are acknowledged by immense multitudes. Messrs. Bradley and Dillon are eminently distinguished as eloquent and popular preachers. Mr. Bickersteth's praises are in all the churches, and the extensive demand for his numerous publications affords solid proof of the estimation with which every thing proceeding from his pen is generally regarded. Each of these three gentlemen afford the most encouraging example of what may be effected by the diligent improvement of widely different talents.

It will, we apprehend, be generally conceded that Mr. Bradley is one of the very best writers of sermons in the present day; and the volume before us is in every respect worthy of his well-earned reputation. It unites in the very highest degree simplicity of style, purity, plainness, precision, and elegance of langnage, with sound, deep, experimental views of scriptural truth. There is nothing unnecessarily offensive or repulsive-we say unnecessarily

offensive, because that full exhibition of the cross of Christ, and that high tone of scriptural holiness which pervades the present volume must always be repugnant to the natural man; but excepting the offence of the cross, there is nothing which can startle the most captious reader,-no low, vulgar, quaint, ungrammatical expressions; all is clear, polished, well-arranged, calculated to enlighten the understanding, affect the heart, and regu. late the conduct. We recommend in the strongest possible manner the careful and repeated perusal of Mr. Bradley's Sermons to Young Ministers, and still more to young men preparing for orders who are desirous of forming a style at once adapted to the higher refinement of a suburban congregation or the lowly attainments of a rustic assembly.

It is scarcely necessary to insert a specimen of the style of a writer whose works are so extensively known; but the following view of a disputed passage, is at once so correct, important, and calculated to edify and instruct, that we are desirous of giving it the widest circulation. The subject is the complaint of St. Paul, Rom. vii. 24, on which Mr. B. observes,

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It suggests three particulars for our consideration;-first, the person who makes it; secondly, the evil he deplores in it; and thirdly, the effects which this evil produced on him.

I." Of whom then," we may ask in the first instance, "speaketh the apostle this? Of himself, or of some other man?" "Not of himself,' some will tell us, nor of any sincere Christian. He is speaking in the person of a sinner whom God has compelled to feel the burden of his transgressions and the evil of his nature, but in whose mind the love of sin still reigns. We are to regard his words as a complaint extorted, in an hour of thoughtfulness, from a man of an enlightened conscience with an ungodly heart.' But a single glance at the preceding part of the chapter confutes this interpretation. Whoever he may be that is speaking in OCTOBER 1831.

it, he says in one place, "I would do good;" in another, "I delight in the law of God;" and surely these are expressions that never yet came with truth from unhallowed lips, that never could come from any but a renewed heart. Besides, this complaint itself marks the character of him who uttered it. It designates one hating sin in a very extraordinary degree, and striving against it with every power of his soul; and Paul himself was a man of this class. We infer therefore that the apostle is describing his own feelings in this passage, and consequently right feelings, exactly those feelings which, in a world like this, we should expect to find at work in a partially renewed mind.

And we must not attempt to turn away the force of his language by referring it to some early period of his life, or some former stage of his Christian experience. He evidently alludes to an evil that was distressing him at the time he wrote. It is not Saul, the persecutor, who sends forth this cry of wretchedness; not Saul on the ground in the road to Damascus; no, nor yet Saul listening in his blindness to the teaching of Ananias ;-it is Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ; Paul, the chosen and beloved apostle; Paul, the champion, and bulwark, and glory, of the whole Christian church.

And he speaks here not merely as a Christian, but as a very experienced Christian; as one arrived at a state of rare maturity in grace, a state in which sin appears to the mind, as it appears to the divine mind, an evil, an intolerable evil, a thing so hateful, that the very remains of it are not to be endured; they must be got rid of, at all events, they must be controlled and counteracted, or the heart will break.

And the holiest amongst you, brethren, will be the most willing to take this view of the text, and never so ready to look at it in this light, as in your holiest hours. You read here nothing that surprises you. On the contrary, you deem these words some of the plainest and most natural the Bible contains. If you must wonder at all, you only wonder that any moment should ever go over any one man, in which he is not taking them as his own.

We see then already one use that we are to make of this complaint. It is laid before us as a touchstone whereby we may try the reality of our own personal religion, and a standard by which we may measure its extent.

II. Our next subject of inquiry is the ground of it, the evil it deplores.

This undoubtedly is sin, and sin apart from any punishment the apostle either felt on account of it, or dreaded. He does not cry out like a criminal tortured on the rack to which his crimes have brought him; he does not say with Cain, "My punishment is greater than I can bear;" nor with the rich man in the parable, "I am tormented in this flame." It is sin itself that grieves him. Nor again, like the suffering David, is he bewailing some enormous transgression that had exposed him to shame, and weakened his trust in the divine mercy. The man's life was blameless. It was so upright and consistent, that the Holy Spirit has not recorded of him, from the day of his conversion to the hour of his death, one mistake or crime.

And herein lies the peculiarity of his language-he complains of sin as sin; of sin that he knew to be pardoned; of sin too within him; of that which no eye saw, but the workings of which his soul deeply felt. He mourns over inward corruption, the loathsome and intolerable iniquity of the heart.

And did this exist,' it may be asked, in the holy Paul?? It did, brethren, and there is not a single heart out of heaven, in which it does not exist; there is not a godly heart out of heaven, in which it is not felt. Men talk of perfection, talk of it with their feet on this vile earth and breathing its tainted air; but poor indeed are such men's views of holiness, and dark indeed their knowledge of their God. Their perfection is a dream of ignorance. It is nothing better than a blind man's landscape, or a deaf man's song.

The apostle calls this inward corruption by various names. It is sometimes "the law of sin;" at other times, "the body of sin;" here it is "a body of death." He terms it "a body," to give us an idea of the magnitude of the evil, the strength and extent of its influence; and he speaks of it as "a body of death," because, in its tendency, it leads to death, and when allowed its full scope, it ends in death. He intimates, in this expression, what Saint James plainly asserts, that "when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." We are reminded here of nothing less than this awful fact, that every one of us is carrying about in his breast that which can destroy him. There are still in the holiest heart, the elements, not of mis

chief only, but of utter ruin, the seeds of total and irretrievable misery.

And even when checked, this evil principle still shews its mortal tendency. It often paralyzes even the renewed soul. It chills within it that divine life which God himself has implanted, suspending or clogging its operations, and marring its enjoyment. No elevation of character can lift us above its reach, no heavenly wisdom can always baffle its assaults, no attainments in holiness can neutralize its power. The heart which has been chosen, and consecrated, and long dwelt in, as the temple of God; the heart bearing the image of Jehovah, and well nigh meet for his kingdom; the heart warm with the love of heaven and expanding with a foretaste of its joys; even such a heart as this, an evil within can sometimes half wither, and make it, through many a mournful hour, in its feelings, and affections, and almost all its workings, like the heart that has never once felt the regenerating hand of God, that has Satan still for its master and his misery for its end.

The operations of this remaining depravity are manifold and unceasing. We cannot look into our minds without tracing them.

It discovers itself in evil thoughts. These the Christian hates; he would bar them out for ever from his soul; yet they come, come almost every hour, come in crowds, and never perhaps in crowds so great, as when he wishes them the farthest from him. Some of them undoubtedly come from without; they must be traced to Satan; but most of them are inborn. They arise naturally and spontaneously within us, just as noxious weeds spring up in their native climate and parent soil.

And then how many and how strong are the evil desires which spring out of these evil thoughts! They are not fostered in the believer's mind; he abhors them; it is the business of his life to subdue them and root them up; but where is the man, however elevated in spirit, whom they do not infest? And how can it be otherwise? With a void ever aching within us; with capabilities of happiness never yet satisfied; surrounded at the same time, by objects congenial to our earth-born nature, adapted to its propensities and offering to gratify them; with every sense an open inlet to temptation, and every appetite and passion ready to welcome it; carrying about with us a hungry soul in a world crowded with that which

looks like food and at which all around us are seen greedily catching, while the real materials of its happiness are at a distance from it, out of its sight, and, as feeling often tells us, out of its reach ;is it wonderful, brethren, that in such a situation, our hearts sometimes go wrong? Is it wonderful that the desires we should raise up to heaven, often cleave to the dust? Is it not rather wonderful that we are able at any time to rise above the allurements that surround us; and more than this, to give the warmest and strongest of our longings to an unseen God?

And think too of the evil tempers that still assail us-envy, anger, jealousy, party-spirit, and many more. We ought long since to have done with these vile feelings, and there are moments when we are ready to think them clean gone from us for ever, but, before we are aware, they rise again into action, and amaze and confound us by their strength. How often and how painfully have some of us felt their influence! We have gone into the society of our fellow-men calm and cheerful, with the law of love on our tongue and no emotion opposed to it in our heart; but how have we left it? Humbled and ashamed. Some evil temper has been set at work, and destroyed at once every kind and every peaceful feeling. It has occasioned a tumult within us, which we have hardly known how to conceal or bear. We have returned to our homes disgusted with the world, and still more disgusted with ourselves; ready to wish for a solitude where no human being shall ever again be found to excite our corruptions, or be the spectator of our weakness. And what has caused this change? The veriest trifle; a word or look, the absence of a word or look; a provocation so minute, that we could scarcely define it; a thing so contemptible, that we despise ourselves for giving it a feeling or a thought.

There is yet another way in which our corruption works-it hinders much of the good we aim at; and the good which it cannot hinder, it pollutes.

When our hearts begin to warm with the love of Christ, and new purposes are formed of more entire devotedness to his blessed service, it opposes sloth to feeling; it calls up selfishness to reason down our plans of mercy; it throws a chill over the kindling affections; and, instead of the career of zeal and usefulness we had marked out for ourselves,

we once again lie down and take our rest in the torpor of a shameful ease.

And then when we are actually at work for God, think of the unworthy motives that are generally at work also. How often are we aiming only at earthly honour and applause! and how more often still are we wishing to share with the Lord Jehovah in the honour that is his alone!

And go with us into our chambers. O the sin that besets us there! We dare not cease to pray; we know that death would follow madness like that; but

what are our prayers? Many of them as trifling and heartless, as though the living God were an idol, or we needed no longer either his help or his mercy. There are times when we cannot pray. Our bewildered minds refuse their office. Our thoughts wander to the ends of the earth. The hour that we hoped would be spent in communion with heaven, is passed in nothingness, or in that which is worse. "When I would do good," says the apostle, "evil is present with me," and there is not a servant of Christ among us all, who does not, every time he aims to seek God or serve God, feel it, in a greater or less degree, to be present with him.

III. Let us pass on now to a third point-the effects produced on Saint Paul by the inward pollution he bewails.

He mentions two of these.

that man.

1. It made him wretched. And nothing else could produce this effect in He suffered more in his Master's cause than any before or any after him, and yet not a complaint or sigh could his sufferings wring from him. Of poverty and want, of toil and peril, of contempt and persecution, he said, "None of these things move me;" nay, he tells us that he actually "took pleasure" in these things, he gloried and exulted in them, because they were laid upon him for Christ's sake. But now look at this heroic sufferer. He is groaning with misery. Sin has done what neither scourgings, nor imprisonments, nor stonings, nor shipwrecks, ever could do-it has beaten him down. He cannot bear it. The least remains of it are a burden too heavy for him to stand under; they goad him even to impatience.

The most obvious sense we can put on his words carries us thus far, but it is generally supposed that the idea of misery is conveyed in this text in a yet stronger manner. It was the dreadful practice, we are told, of some ancient

tyrants, to punish any unfortunate object of their displeasure by binding to him the lifeless body of a fellow-creature, a dead carcase to a living man; and then compelling him to bear it about with him to his constant horror and wretchedness. To a situation like this, Saint Paul is thought, in this passage, to compare his own. He feels himself, while burdened with sin, like an unhappy captive carrying about a loath'some and intolerable weight, and exclaims in the anguish of his tortured spirit, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"

And similar to this is the light in which every real believer looks on sin. He regards it as a detestable object. It pains and distresses him. Nothing distresses him like it. It is the one main sorrow of his life. Take this away from him, and then place him where you may, and heap on him what you will, he is a happy man. 'How great then,' it may be said, 'is the difference between him and others!' Brethren, it is great, far greater and far more extensive than many of you conceive; but in no respect is it so marked as in this, in the griefs of the Christian, in the objects over which he most bitterly mourns.

Look around this congregation. We are all more or less the children of sorrow. There is not one of us, who has not within him some known or secret cause of disquietude. Now bring a messenger from heaven, and let him ask each one of us what sorrow he shall take from us, what spring of grief in our breasts he shall close, how various, could we speak out, would be our answers! But yet there are men here, who would cry aloud with one voice for one evil to be removed. That evil would be sin, and among those men, however few in number, would every one of us be found, who is on his way to heaven. Would we really know whither we are going? Would we know, without selfdelusion or mistake, our character in the sight of God? Then let each one of us ask himself, What makes me most wretched? What do I deem the greatest affliction of my life? Over what during the last week, or month, or year, have I most frequently and heavily mourned? Is it sickness, pain, or poverty? Is it the loss of this friend or that child? Is it my baffled schemes and blighted prospects? Is it mortified vanity, or disappointed hope, or wounded, or thwarted, or stifled affection? Or is it Saint Paul's great sorrow? Is it the

Christian's affliction-sin? the sin of my heart, the pollution of my soul?

2. And this sorrow in the mind of the apostle, was not a mere feeling, a sentimental grief that he took a pleasure and almost a pride in indulging. The evil he deplored compelled him to look about for deliverance from it.

When he was unjustly imprisoned by the magistrates at Philippi, we find him in no haste to be released from his fetters. 66 They have sent to let you go," said the keeper of the prison to him, " now therefore depart, and go in peace." "Nay verily," answered he, they have beaten us openly uncondemned, and have cast us into prison, and now do they thrust us out privily! Let them come themselves and fetch us out." But from his indwelling corruptions, he was impatient to be released. Here there is no waiting, no standing on form, no indifference. Like a wretched prisoner who is panting in his dungeon for the air and the light, he cries aloud, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?"

The

It is evident at once, that this effort to get free from sin is no common thing. Nothing is more remote from the ordinary workings of our nature. Even in cases where the pollution of the heart is admitted as a fact, and professed to be deplored as a mournful evil, it is not always nor generally that this struggle for deliverance follows. On the contrary, a very different effect is often manifested. The ungodly man takes courage in sin from the very consideration of his sinfulness. He makes use of his corruption as an opiate to his fears. 'I am frail,' he says; 'I carry about with me a weak and fallen nature. God who will be my Judge, knows my weakness, and will make allowances for it. He will not punish severely those delinquencies to which such a nature as mine must be liable; he will never call me to a strict account for the sins into which I am thus instinctively and, as I feel, irresistibly led!" Poor, miserable sophistry! but not too miserable to be heard and echoed every day in this foolish world. It finds an excuse for guilt in the magnitude of guilt. It pleads the baseness of the heart as an excuse for the criminality of the life. "There is poison in the fountain,' it says. 'If I did not put it there, I will foster it there, and pour in more. Not an atom of it shall be taken away. And then who can lay to my charge the poison in the streams?'