O my brethren! let these truths sink deep into your hearts. Without a thorough conviction of them, all the preaching in the world will be of no service to you. You may hear a sermon every day, and every hour in the week, and be as far from CHRIST as ever, if you continue to depend upon preaching and preachers alone for your salvation. The utmost they can do, is to direct you to CHRIST. Regard them only when they give you this advice. Value them not for their natural or even spiritual endowments; you may be deceived in both. The surest and most profitable way you can take, is to consider them as mere planters and waterers; and to follow them, so far only as they follow CHRIST. DISCOURSE XIII. The Riches, Privileges, and Honours of the Christian. 1 COR. CHAP. iii. VER. 21, 22, 23. "THEREFORE LET NO MAN GLORY IN MEN: FOR ALL THINGS ARE YOURS; WHETHER PAUL, OR APOLLOS, OR CEPHAS, OR THE WORLD, OR LIFE, OR DEATH, OR THINGS PRESENT, OR THINGS TO COME; ALL ARE YOURS, AND YE ARE CHRIST'S, AND CHRIST IS GOD'S." The scope and design of the Blessed Apostle in this passage of his epistle, together with the true meaning and import of his general proposition, "All things are yours," hath been already explained in my first discourse from these words. In my second discourse, I entered upon the consideration of those particular privileges of the Christian, which are enumerated under this general head: And as the first of these privileges had a more immediate and striking reference to the great end he here had in view, which was to convince the Corinthians of the sin and folly of attaching themselves to particular and favourite preachers; I enlarged upon this head, and endeavoured to prove, that Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, and all other ministers of the Gospel, were no more than the servants of their brethren; that they were "theirs" by a particular privilege, inasmuch as their office, their labours, talents, and several endowments, were entrusted to them for no other purpose, but that God, through them, might communicate "the unspeakable riches of his Grace" to the whole body of Christians. In this character, and in this alone, they were all equally entitled to their esteem and love, but not to any personal preference, or undue exaltation of one above another. Not content with this, however, the good Apostle, under the full inspiration of Divine Truth, and the glorious enlargement of Divine Love, breaks forth into a further declaration of those still higher privileges, to which the meanest member of the church of CHRIST is equally and in common entitled, with the greatest and most advanced believers: not only "Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, are yours; but the world, and life and death, and things present, and things to come: all are yours, and ye are CHRIST'S, and CHRIST is GOD'S."