That Christians are thus expounders of the gospel, witnesses as to what are the duties it enjoins, and what constitutes practical religion, none can deny. The impenitent take them to be such. Whatever Christians do, they say must be right. Whatever the church practices and countenances, is a sufficient justification for them in doing the same. Whatever is done in the green tree, can certainly be done in the dry. If God's people can travel and visit on the Sabbath, or engage in promiscuous dancing and card-playing in the nightly assemblies of amusement and frivolity, or resort to the gamester's arts to make money for Christ, surely such practices cannot be wrong for others; for Christians would not do wrong, nor deny their principles. The world reason in this way, and they reason well. The logic is good, and cannot be refuted. They have a right to take notice of Christians as God's witnesses, and to infer that whatever they do is consistent with the morality of the New Testament. 3. Christians are witnesses to the world as to what are the _sacrifices and self-denials_ which the religion of Christ requires of its disciples. That the gospel does make these a condition of discipleship is plain to every mind. Whosoever doth not "deny himself, and take up his cross," cannot be my disciple. Again and again are Christians said to sacrifice all for Christ, and to be crucified to the world. Now what these Scripture representations mean may be learned by the practical lives of God's people, for they profess to be living such lives of self-denial, to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. In them the impenitent find what religion prohibits; how it separates its follower from the world; how it lays its cross upon him, and calls upon him to bear reproach and shame and wrong and persecution for Christ's sake. Such a testimony Christians are bound to give; and blessed be God, they have been able to give it in all ages of the world. For,