a task is set
before you, the more you will be able to understand the language of joy
and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of a human soul's
redemption.

This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled; the want
of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to sympathy the
most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual
wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more happy to think that it
will be wrought for some;--for whom, no mortal eye or judgment can
discern; but it will be wrought for some. If many should yield in
despair to their enemy, yet some will resist him: if Christ be to many
no more than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a vague
sense of something solemn, which passes over the mind for an instant,
and then vanishes, yet to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the
wisdom of God, and the power of God. There are some here, we may be
quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and
angels, that what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature
renewed and strengthened by grace.

Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing like
wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be expected
to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness? and how can
merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a tendency of
nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act upon the mind? for
it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged and the young should be
brought into entire sympathy with each other, unless Christ's love be
their common bond. Human wisdom in advanced life may be, and is to
persons of strong faculties of mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it
be made so to persons of ordinary faculties in early youth? There are
faults which society condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in
after life is slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and
abhor them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of them by
their society is either very slight, or does not exist at all? And,
therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same faults' continue to
be common in schools, the same faults both of omission and commission;
there is the same inherent difficulty of bringing persons of different
ages and positions to think and feel alike, unless Christ has become
posse