YOUR character for candour and piety takes from me all fear that you should be offended at the address of a person unknown, _even_ though this address is designed to point out something amiss in you; which it is absolutely necessary (for the good of your own soul, and for the eternal welfare of those who hear you) that you should amend.――――You _believe_!――You _feel_ the power, and live the _life_ of _faith_!――Oh why will you not strive that others may be partakers of like happiness with you?――I know your general manner of preaching: I myself have heard you; and while my ear has been delighted with your affecting delivery, your elegant language, and well-turned periods, my heart has _bled_ to think that _such talents_ should be so miserably perverted: _bled_ for _you_, and for those _poor souls_, whom this way of preaching lulls into a fatal _security_. Pardon my freedom of speech; pardon my boldness towards you; but you yourself will acknowledge, that where the foundation is unsound, the building must fall; and no true foundation can be laid except Jesus Christ. Your own experience must tell you, that a divine power can alone change the heart; that all outward regularity of behaviour, all rounds and forms of devotion, and all moral duties, without this change are, utterly unavailing, and only like beautifying the outside of a sepulchre, which within is full of dead mens bones and of all uncleanness. _You_ are sensible _too_, that faith in a dying Redeemer is the only means given us by which this change of heart can be effected. To what purpose then is it to tell _poor, lost, undone_ man, of the _dignity_ of his _rational_ nature, and the beauty of _virtue_?――Dear sir, for the sake of that God whom you love and _adore_, _away_ with these _shadows_, and substitute in their place realities. How would it delight the heart of several of your friends (who greatly love and esteem you, and who wish well to the gospel of Christ) to see you, with all the force of eloquence, labouring to convince your hearers of the _sin_ of their _nature_, their condemnation in the sight of God, and their utter incapacity to help _themselves_; and then proclaiming to them, “Behold the _Lamb_ of _God_, who taketh away the _sins_ of the world!”