LECTURES ON THE ROMANS.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

It is possible to conceive the face of our be a twofold process begun and carried world overspread with a thick and mid- forward, and at length brought to its full night darkness, and without so much as a and perfect termination. Light must be particle of light to alleviate it, from any poured upon the earth, and the faculty of one quarter of the firmament around us. seeing must be conferred upon its inhabiIn this case, it were of no avail to the tants. One can imagine, that, instead of people who live in it, that all of them were the light being made instantaneously to in possession of sound and perfect eyes. burst upon us in its highest splendour, The organ of sight may be entire, and yet and, instead of the faculty being immedinothing be seen from the total absence of ately bestowed upon us in full vigour to external light among the objects on every meet and to encounter so strong a tide of side of us. Or in other words, to bring effulgency-that both these processes were about the perception of that which is with- conducted in a way that was altogether out, it is not enough that we have the gradual-that the light, for example, had power of vision among men; but, in ad- its first weak glimmering; and that the dition to this, there must be a visibility in eye, in the feebleness of its infancy, was the trees, and the houses, and the moun- not overcome by it-that the light adtains, and the living creatures, which are vanced with morning step to a clearer now in the ordinary discernment of men. brilliancy; and that the eye, rendered But, on the other hand, we may reverse able to bear it, multiplied the objects of the supposition. We may conceive an its sight, and took in a wider range of entire luminousness to be extended over perception-that the light shone at length the face of nature-while the faculty of unto the perfect day; and that the eye, sight was wanting among all the indivi- with the last finish upon its properties and duals of our species. In this case, the its powers, embraced the whole of that external light would be of as little avail variety which lies within the present comtowards our perception of any object at a pass of human contemplation. We must distance from us, as the mere possession see that if one of these processes be graof the sense of seeing was in the former dual, the other should be gradual also instance. Both must conspire to the effect By shedding too strong a light upon weak of our being rendered conversant with the eyes, we may overpower and extinguish external world through the medium of the them. By granting too weak a light to eye. And if the power of vision was not him who has strong eyes, we make the faenough, without a visibility on the part of culty outstrip the object of its exercise, the things which are around us, by God and thus incur a waste of endowment. saying let there be light-as little is their By attempering the one process to the visibility enough, without the power of other, we maintain, throughout all the vision stamped as an endowment by the stages, that harmony which is so abundhand of God, on the creatures whom He antly manifested in the works of Nature has formed. and Providence, between man as he actually is, and the circumstances by which man is actually surrounded.

Now we can conceive that both these defects or disabilities, in the way of vision, may exist at the same time-or that These preliminary statements will we all the world was dark, and that all the trust be of some use for illustrating the people in the world were blind. To progress, not of natural, but of spiritual emerge out of this condition-there must light, along that vath which forms the suc

est character lay upon the first moments
in the history of sinful man; and which
required both light from Heaven upon his
soul, and a renovation of its vitiated and
disordered faculties, ere it could be effec-
tually dissipated.

From this point then, the restoration of
spiritual light to our benighted world
takes its commencement-when Adam
was utterly blind; and the canopy over
his head, was palled in impenetrable dark-
ness. To remove the one disability, was
in itself to do nothing-to remove the
other disability was in itself to do nothing.
Both must be removed, ere Adam could
again see. Both may have been removed
instantaneously; and by one fiat of Om-
nipotence, such a perfection of spiritual
discernment may have been conferred on
our first parents, and such a number of
spiritual truths have been made by a
direct communication from heaven to
stand around him, as in a single moment
would have ushered him into all the splen-
dours of a full and finished revelation.
But this has not been God's method in
His dealings with a sinful world. Spiritual
light and spiritual discernment, were not
called forth to meet each other, in all the
plenitude of an unclouded brilliancy, at
the bidding of His immediate voice. The
outward truth has been dealt out by a
gradual process of revelation-and the
inward perception of it has been made to
maintain a corresponding pace through a
process equally gradual. A greater num-
ber of spiritual objects has been intro-
duced, from one time to another, into the
field of visibility-and the power of
spiritual vision has from one age to ano-
ther been made to vary and to increase
along with them.

cessive history of our world. Whatever
discernment Adam had of the things of
God in Paradise, the fall which he expe-
rienced was a fall into the very depths of
the obscurity of midnight. The faculties
he had in a state of innocence, made him
able to perceive, that the Creator, who
formed him, took pleasure in all that He
had formed; and rejoiced over them so
long as he saw that they were good. But
when they ceased to be good, and became
evil-when sin had crept into our world
in the shape of a novelty as yet unheard,
and as yet unprovided for-when the re-
lation of man to his Maker was not merely
altered, but utterly and diametrically re-
versed-when, from a loyal and affection-
ate friend, he had become at first a daring,
and then a distrustful and affrighted rebel
-Adam may, when a sense of integrity
made all look bright and smiling and se-
rene around him, have been visited from
Heaven with the light of many high com-
munications; nor could he feel at a loss
to comprehend, how He, who was the
Fountain of moral excellence, should
cherish, with a Father's best and kindest
regards, all those whom He had filled and
beautified and blest with its unsullied
emanations: But, after the gold had be-
come dim, how He whose eye was an eye
of unspotted holiness could look upon it
with complacency-after the sentence had
been incurred, how, while truth and un-
changeableness were the attributes of
God, it ever could be reversed by the lips
of Him who pronounced it-after guilt
with all its associated terrors had changed
to the view of our first parents the aspect
of the Divinity, how the light of His coun-
tenance should ever beam upon them
again with an expression of love or ten-
derness-these were the mysteries which
beset and closed and shrouded in thickest
darkness, the understandings of those
who had just passed out of innocence into
sin. Till God made this first communi-
cation, there was no external light, to
alleviate that despair and dreariness
which followed the first visitation of a
feeling so painful and so new as the con-
sciousness of evil. And, if the agitations
of the heart have any power to confuse
and to unsettle the perceptions of the un-cast progenitors, that the seed of the wo-
derstanding-if remorse and perplexity man should bruise the head of the ser-
and fear, go to disturb the exercise of all pent. To this, other announcements were
our judging and all our discerning facul- added in the progress of ages-and even
ties-if, under the engrossment of one the great truth, which lay enveloped in
great and overwhelming apprehension, the very first of them, had a growing illu-
we can neither see with precision nor mination cast upon it in the lapse of gene-
contemplate with steadiness-above all, rations. The promise given to Adam,
if, under the administration of a righteous brightened into a more cheering and in-
God, there be a constant alliance between telligible hope, when renewed to Abra-
spiritual darkness and a sense of sin un- ham, in the shape of an assurance, that,
pardoned or sin unexpiated-then may through one of his descendants, all the
we be sure that an obscurity of the deep-families of the earth were to be blest; and

Those truths, which make up the body of our written revelation, may be regarded as so many objects, on which visibility has been conferred by so many successive communications of light from Heaven. They were at first few in number; and these few were offered to mankind, under the disguise of a rather vague and extended generality. The dawn of this external revelation, was marked by the solitary announcement, given to our out

to Jacob, that Shiloh was to be born, and that to Him the gathering of the people should be; and to Moses, that a great Prophet was to arise like unto himself; and to David, that one of his house was to sit upon his throne for ever; and to Isaiah, that one was to appear, who should be a light unto the Gentiles, and the salvation of all the ends of the earth; and to Daniel, that the Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself, and that through Him reconciliation was to be made for iniquity, and an everlasting righteousness was to be brought in; and to John the Baptist, that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and the Prince of that kingdom was immediately to follow in the train of his own ministrations; and to the apostles in the days of our Saviour upon earth, that He with whom they companied was soon to be lifted up for the healing of the nations, and that all who looked to Him should live; and finally, to the apostles after the day of Pentecost, when, fraught with the full and explicit tidings of a world's atonement and a world's regeneration, they went forth with the doctrine of Christianity in its entire copiousness, and have transmitted it to future ages in a book, of which it has been said, that no man shall add thereto, and that no man shall take away from it.

blended with the truths of human experience-so solidly reared from the foundation of Jesus Christ and of Him crucified, into a superstructure at once firm and graceful and stately-so branching forth into all the utilities of moral and practical application-and, at length, from an argument bearing upon one great conclusion, so richly efflorescing into all the virtues and accomplishments which serve both to mark and to adorn the person of regenerated man-Such is the worth and the density and the copiousness of this epistle-that, did our power of vision keep pace at all with the number and the value of those spiritual lessons which abound in it, then indeed should we become the children of light, be rich in a wisdom that the world knoweth not, in a wisdom which is unto salvation.

But the outward light by which an object is rendered visible is one thing-and the power of vision is another. That these two are not only distinct in respect of theoretical conception, but were also experimentally distinct from each other in the actual history of God's communications to the world, will, we trust, be made to appear from several passages of that revealed history in the Bible; and from one single appeal which we shall make to the experience of our hearers.

This forms but a faint and a feeble out- The first passage is in 1 Peter i. 10-12. line of that march, by which God's exter-"Of which salvation the prophets have nal revelation hath passed magnificently enquired and searched diligently, who onwards, from the first days of our world, prophesied of the grace that should come through the twilight of the patriarchal unto you. Searching what, or what ages and the brightening of the Jewish manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which dispensation, aided as it was by the secon- was in them did signify, when it testified dary lustre of types and of ceremonies- beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and and the constant accumulation of Prophe- the glory that should follow. Unto whom cy, with its visions every century becom- it was revealed, that not unto themselves, ing more distinct, and its veil becoming but unto us, they did minister the things more transparent-and the personal com- which are now reported unto you, by munications of God manifest in the flesh, them that have preached the gospel unto who opened His mouth amongst us, but you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from still opened it in parables-insomuch that heaven; which things the angels desire to when He ascended from His disciples, He look into." This passage sets the old prostill left them in wonder and dimness and phets before us in a very striking attitude. mystery-till, by the pouring forth of the They positively did not know the meanHoly Spirit from the place which He had ing of their own prophecies. They were gone to occupy, the evidence of inspira- like men of dim and imperfect sight, whose tion received its last and its mightiest en-hand was guided by some foreign power largement, which is now open to all for the purpose of perusal, but so shut against every purpose of augmentation, that in this respect it may be said, its words are closed up and sealed to the time of the end.

The Epistle to the Romans, forms one of the most complete and substantial products of this last and greatest illumination. In this document, the visibility of external revelation is poured forth not merely on the greatest variety of Christian doctrine, but on that doctrine so harmoniously

to the execution of a picture and who, after it was finished, vainly attempted, by straining their eyes, to explain and to ascertain the subject of it. They were the transmitters of a light, which, at the same time, did not illuminate themselves. They uttered the word, or they put it down in writing, as it was given to them-and then they searched by their own power, but searched in vain for the signification of it. They enquired diligently what the meaning of the Spirit could be, when it testified of the sufferings of Christ and the glory

the great agent of all revelation, even the Holy Spirit who had already furnished the object of perception in the word, had also furnished the organ of perception in the understanding-not till then, were the inquirers after the truth as it is in Jesus effectually introduced, to a full acquaintance with all its parts,-or to the full be

of Christ. But till that Spirit gave the which had arisen on the outward page of power of discernment, as well as set be- revelation, had also dawned and arisen fore them the objects of discernment-upon their own hearts-not, in short, till their attempts were nugatory. And indeed they were sensible of this, and acquiesced in it. It was told them by revelation, that the subject matter of their prophecy was not for themselves, but for others-even for those to whom the gospel should be preached in future days, and who, along with the ministration of the external word, were to receive the minis-nefit of all its influence. tration of the Holy Ghost-whose office We cannot take leave of this passage, it is to put into the mouths of prophets without adverting to the importance of the things which are to be looked to and that practical injunction which is containbelieved, and whose office also it is to put ed in it. They who are still in darkness into the hearts of others the power of are called upon to look, and with earnestseeing and believing these things. And ness too, to a particular quarter; and that it serves clearly to mark the distinction is the word of God-and to do so until the between these two offices, that the pro- power of vision was granted to them. If phets, alluded to in this passage, present-a blind man were desirous of beholding a ed to the world a set of truths which they themselves did not understand-and that again the private disciples of Peter, who were not so learned as to be made the original and inspired authors of such a communication, were honoured with the far more valuable privilege of being made to understand it.

landscape, and had the hope at the same time of having his sight miraculously restored to him, he might, even when blind, go to the right post of observation, and turn his face to the right direction, and thus wait for the recovery of that power which was extinguished. And, in like manner, we are all at the right post, when we are giving heed to our Bibles. We are all going through a right exercise, when, with the strenuous application of our natural powers, we are reading and pondering and comparing and remembering the words of the testimony-and if asked, how long we should persevere in this employment, let us persevere in it with patience and prayer until, as Peter says, the day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts.

This we think will appear still more clearly from another passage of the same apostle in 2 Peter i. 19-21. "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were That John the Baptist should not know moved by the Holy Ghost." No prophecy himself to have been he who was to come is of private interpretation. It was not in the spirit and power of Elijah; and suggested by the natural sense of him hence, in reply to the question Art thou who uttered it-and as little is it under- Elias! should say that I am not-whereas stood, or can it be explained, by the na- our Saviour affirmed of him, that he was tural powers of the same person. He the Elias who should come-this ignorwas the mere recipient of a higher influ-ance of his may be as much due to the ence; and he conveyed what he had thus received to the world-speaking not of his own will but just as he was moved by the Holy Ghost-and enabled to discern or to expound the meaning of what he had thus spoken, not of his own power, but just as the same Holy Ghost who gave him the materials of contemplation, gave him also the faculty of a just and true contemplation. The light of which he was barely the organ of transmission, shone in a dark place, so long as it shone upon the blind; and, not till the blind was made to see not till the eyes of those, who were taking heed to the letter of the prophecy, were opened to perceive the life and meaning and spirit of the prophecy-not till that day which has dawned, and that day-star

want of outward information about the point, as to any lack in the faculty of discernment. The same thing however can scarcely be said of his ignorance of the true character of the very Messiah whom he himself foretold-insomuch, that, though he had baptized him and attested him to be the Lamb of God, and had seen the Spirit descending upon him like a dove-yet he seems afterwards to have been so much startled by the obscurity of his circumstances, and by the style of his companionship which looked unsuitable to the character of a great Prince and Deliverer, that, in perplexity about the matter, he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask whether he was the person who should come or they had to look for another