and makes the weary struggle it may be of months or of years in order to attain it. in order to attain it. It is oftenest in

this way that the first movements are made under the first powerful visitation of seriousness. The law in its unsullied purity-the law in its uncompromising rigour-the law in its unexcepted right of sovereignty over every desire of the heart and every deed of the history-These may not be adverted to at the time of the soul's incipient concern about these things; and so the attempt might fairly be made, to compass such an obedience as might found a claim or title to the rewards of eternity. In the prosecution of this object there may be the forth-putting of great strenuousness-the anxious feeling of great scrupulosity-the new habit, at least of toiling at the servilities, if not the new heart which had a taste for the sanctities of religion. At all events, many laborious drudgeries might be gone through. The regularities both of private and family prayer might be instituted. There might be allotted hours for the exercises of sacredness; and these in full tale and measure may be observed most rigidly. In short, a thousand punctualities may be rendered-and all with the view to establish a merit in the eye of heaven's Lawgiver, which never can be effectually done without a full and faultless adherence to Heaven's law. Now, we say, that if conscience feel as it ought, there will throughout this whole process be a festering, an inappeasable disquietude-a self-jealousy, and a self-dissatisfaction which no doings or deserts of

our own can terminate-a feeling of unworthiness which in spite of every effort will adhere to our best services, and turn all into hopelessness and vexation-For, let it be observed, that, reach what elevation of virtue we may, there will in proportion as we advance and we ascend, be further heights and distances in moral excellence beyond us and above

us.

The higher we proceed in this career, we shall command a farther view of the spaces which still lie before us; or, in other words, we shall be more filled with a sense of the magnitude of our own shortcomings. The conscience, in fact, grows in sensibility, just as the conduct is more the object of our strict and scrupulous regulation; and so, with every advance we make towards the perfection of the law, does the law appear to rise upon us with her exactions—and we feel as if more helplessly behind than at the outset of our enterprise. The presumptuous imagination of our sufficiency comes down when we thus bring it to the trial; and that impotency of which we were not aware at the outset, we are made to know and to feel experimentally. Meanwhile that is a sore drudgery in which we are implicated; and all the more fatiguing that it is so utterly fruitless-that the peace which we seek to realise by our obedience recedes at every step to a greater distance, because new heights of obedience are ever rising on the view, and baffling every effort to substantiate a valid plea for the rewards of immortality. This is that law-work, of whose aspirations and toils and frantic unavailing

struggles, like those of a captive to break loose from his prison-hold or to scale the precipice which hems him, we read in the affecting history of so many a convert-whose awakened conscience only spoke to him in louder terms of reproach the more he did to appease its endless upbraidings, and whose every attempt to flee from the coming wrath made it glow the more fiercely upon his imagination. Not ten thousand punctualities of the outer conduct can purify a heart that is every day obtaining some fresh revelation of its own worthlessness, and which when brought to the touchstone of a spiritual law finds itself destitute of all right affection or affinity towards God. This is the grand failure. His hand can labour; but his heart cannot love-And after wasting and wearying himself in vain with the operose drudgeries of a manifold observation, he still finds that he is a helpless defaulter from the first and the greatest command

ment.

Now, it is when thus harassed and beset among the impracticable obstructions which lie in the way of doing, that he finds the very outlet he stands in need of when the way of believing is opened to him. The righteousness, which he has so ineffectually tried to make out in his own person, has been already made out for him by another; and now lies for his acceptance, as a simple and unconditional offer which he is invited to lay hold of. The sin, which hitherto has so hardened him with despondency and remorse, is now washed away by the blood

of a satisfying expiation; and God in the gospel of Jesus Christ calls upon him to draw nigh, with the erect the joyful confidence of one who never had offended. The Saviour has completely done for him, what with so much of strenuousness but with so little of success, he has been trying to do for himself; and he is warranted to step immediately into the hopes and the happiness of one, not merely reconciled to God, but vested with the same right to His favour as if he had earned it by the worth of his own services, by the merit of his own full and faultless obedience. What a mighty enlargement when the title-deed to heaven, for which he had been stretching forward with many long and laborious efforts, till he at last sunk down into exhaustion and despair, is put into his hand; and the gifted creature, now set loose from bondage and terror, exchanges the services of constraint for the willing services of a grateful and affectionate loyalty!

It is thus that the guiltiest of sinners, simply on believing the testimony which God hath given of His Son, is instated, and that immediately, in all the titles and privileges of a pure and perfect righteousness before the Lawgiver whom he has offended. He passes from death unto life. Individually he is freed from the penalties of sin, and judicially he is vested with an absolute right to the rewards of a full and finished obedience. The righteousness of Christ is reckoned to him, and he is dealt with accordingly. No wonder that the tidings of a sal

vation so marvellous should be so generally met by the incredulity of nature, opposed as it is to all the expectations and all the tendencies of nature, which when awake to the concerns of another world at all, is ever prompting man to make good his own way to a blissful eternity, and that by a righteousness of his own. It is when delivered from the burden of this felt impossibility, that man breaks forth on a scene of enlargement; when in the secure possession of a right to heaven in the righteousness of his accepted surety, with all the alacrity of an emancipated creature whose bonds have been loosed he proceeds to offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving and to call on the name of the Lord.

And let us not be afraid lest this judicial salvation if it may be thus termed so full, so free, so competent to every sinner, however vile, if he but place his confident and unembarrassed reliance on it, so ready, nay so importunate for the acceptance of all, and that without the least distrust or delay on their part-let us not be afraid, lest this judicial salvation should not bring a moral salvation in its train, as if exemption from the penal consequences of sin were not to be followed up by exemption from the power wherewith, anterior to our reception of the gospel, it lorded over us. The great author of that economy under which we live will not leave any of its parts or any of its provisions unfulfilled upon us. He will sanctify as well as justify; and if we but trust in Christ, we shall be sealed with